Smartphone technology can be used in a surprisingly simple way to improve the wellbeing, and save the lives, of thousands of women. Spearheaded by The Kilimanjaro Cervical Screening Project, the approach involves arming non-physician medical workers with screening kits, treatment tools and mobile phones, so they can visit remote locations in rural Tanzania to screen women for cervical cancer.
These workers will use the phone to photograph a patient’s cervix, instead of performing a typical Pap smear. Once they text those images to a physician, they will receive a diagnosis and treatment recommendation. It sounds simple, and, according to Dr Karen Yeates of Queen’s University, who is the lead investigator of the project, ‘That’s the beauty of it. For early grade cancers, those will be able to be treated right in the field, right in the rural area.’
The World Health Organization (WHO) says that cervical cancer affects women’s wellness 10 times more in Africa than in developed countries, and about 50,000 of the women diagnosed die from it every year. The lower rates of mortality in places like the UK are generally due to regular screenings, which helps you to catch the cancer in its earliest and most treatable stages. In countries like Tanzania, on the other hand, women don’t have access to similar preventative measures and WHO estimates that by the time most African women are diagnosed with the disease, they’ve already advanced into its latest fatal stages.
Thanks to being named one of the 68 finalists in Canada’s Grand Challenges, The Kilimanjaro Cervical Screening Project recently gained a prize of $100,000 funding, allowing it to begin its initial trials, and bring cervical cancer prevention to Tanzania. With technology, the hope is that geography and cost won’t impede the course of wellness as they once did, and soon patients in developing countries will have a real opportunity to survive illnesses that might have otherwise been fatal.