Notes from Kigoma – Real Progress

All continues to hum here in the greater Kigoma region. We finished our refresher training last Wednesday and we couldn’t have been happier with the results. All ten of our original trainees returned and every one of them had continued to screen women in their communities. 341 more women in total. This is remarkable considering the fact that this is really the first time that cervical cancer screening has ever been offered in any of these communities. Most women here are illiterate and few understand their bodies or very much about cancer. Yet the community outreach combining the community health promoters, with JGI support and training and the cooperatives endorsement has helped to create a substantial demand for this new service. Many expected that women would reject the idea of prevention. Not so.

All participants scored quite high on the pretest, indicating a good level of knowledge retention, and by the end of the first three day clinical practicum, the scores had improved even further. More importantly, during the clinical training we watched this highly motivated group reach higher and become quite confident in their VIA skills.

Our own results were also quite interesting. We saw a total of 188 women in three days, of whom, 54 had known HIV+ status. Our positivity rate for VIA was 8.5% or 15 women with one frank cancer. 12 of the 15 positives were also HIV+. There is certainly HPV in the Kigoma community. Most of the VIA positives were very obvious, providing a great training experience for the participants. 12 women received same day treatment with cryo.

More to come tomorrow …