Sharon Kapambwe: Reflecting on my personal journey in the cervical cancer screening space
Sharon Kapambwe, Technical Officer of Cancer Control at the World Health Organization, shared on LinkedIn:
“This year’s theme for the Cervical Cancer Elimination Action Day, today 17 November 2024 has made me reflect on my personal journey in the cervical cancer screening space.
Today I want to celebrate four women who were the first nurses employed to conduct cervical cancer screening in Zambia in 2006. Cervical cancer screening till then was done through Pap smear by medical doctors.
This called for a shift from the method and the people performing the procedure.
Today I celebrate Susan Banda, Chalwa Hamsimbi, late Anne Mutanuka and Dorothy Muchende the first nurses to be recruited in the cervical cancer prevention program in Zambia.
Together they have screened over 100,000 women for the first time. As national masters trainers, they have trained hundreds of health providers as screening nurses and trainer of trainers in Zambia.
Over the years, they have supported other programs in other countries in setting up cervical cancer screening clinics including DRC, Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Malawi, South Africa, Botswana, Kenya, etc.
Despite close to two decades working in the space, one of the challenges is women presenting late with cervical cancer.
From four sites to over 200 sites spread across the whole nation with over a million women having been for cervical cancer for the first time.
Today we remember to celebrate frontline healthworkers around the world who are changing the narrative by offering life saving interventions.”
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ESMO 2024 Congress
September 13-17, 2024
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ASCO Annual Meeting
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OncoThon 2024, Online
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Global Summit on War & Cancer 2023, Online
Dec. 14-16, 2023