Awareness of HPV and cervical cancer in Pakistan is crucial: Experts

KARACHI: Awareness of commoners about Human Papillomavirus (HPV) and cervical cancer is imperative to reduce the risk of the fatality of cancer in Pakistan. 

The screening of papillomavirus is the secondary prevention against cervical cancer. Although the country has no nationwide statistics of cancer patients, in 2022, some 28,000 women died of cervical cancer.” 

Prof. Dr Thomas Iftner, Director of University Clinic, Tuebingen (UKT), Germany, expressed these views while delivering a lecture in the scientific sessions of the three-day IPVS Satellite Symposium on “Human Papillomavirus and Cervical Cancer,” being held in the International Center for Chemical and Biological Sciences (ICCBS), University of Karachi.
 
Scientists from as many as 14 countries are participating in the international symposium, organized by Dr Panjwani Center for Molecular Medicine and Drug Research (PCMD). Names of the participating countries included Germany, Belgium, USA, UK, Iran, Sweden, Indonesia, China, Cameron, Greece, Jordan, Nepal, Kazakhstan, and Sudan.   

The German expert underlined the importance of launching massive awareness programs for the education of Pakistani people and said that the uneducated individuals linked cancer to unrelated causes and myths like black magic and fate. Such awareness programs must inform the public about risk factors, prevention, early detection and treatment of cervical cancer. He said the world has millions of people chronically infected with several viruses, adding that oncogenic viruses are the leading causes of human cancers. 

In her lecture, an Indonesian scholar, Dr Ni Nyoman Tri Puspaningsih, discussed the prevalence of Covid-19. She said, “WHO dashboard of Covid19 in September 16th, 2022 reported 608,328,548 confirmed cases globally, including 6,501,469 deaths.” 

The German scholar, Prof. Dr Christian Betzel, lamented that humanity was facing an increasing health threat caused by a variety of multidrug-resistant bacteria and parasites, and in parallel by already well-known and, more recently, emerging viruses, such as coronavirus. Coronavirus is genuinely devastating and causing, during the last two years, extremely high numbers of infections and even death, he added.