Interior Amerindian women to get help with cervical cancer screening

Two international groups have come together to assist Amerindian women in remote areas in screening for cervical cancer, removing  pre-cancerous lesions and performing hysterectomies when necessary.
According to a report in the online news agency, PR.com, the Breast Cancer Site team recently created a ‘Gift That Gives More’ for the Remote Area Medical (RAM)  Volunteer Corps to help Amerindian women in rural villages in Guyana.
The report said that every US$58 ‘Women’s Exams in Remote Guyana’ gift represents a direct donation to RAM’s ongoing efforts in remote Guyana in the area of cervical cancer. According to RAM’s website the group is currently treating hundreds of village women.
“Cervical cancer is preventable through screening, yet the indigenous women of Guyana have never been screened due to the extreme difficulty encountered in reaching their remote villages,” the group said on its website.
It stated that its Guyana cervical cancer team travels by “jeep, plane and ox cart and soon on foot, by canoe, and by parachute” to the remote savannahs and rainforests of Guyana to provide medical care for the Amerindian women.
It said further that its volunteers screen for cervical cancer, remove pre-cancerous lesions, perform hysterectomies when necessary and treat cervical cancer with life-saving radical hysterectomies.
“The team is also researching new techniques that would replace pap smear screening and enable women to be diagnosed and treated in one visit.”
Meanwhile the Breast Cancer Site was launched in October 2000 and it provides funding for free mammograms for women in need of breast cancer research and related issues. In 2007 the site’s ‘Click to Give’ programme funded nearly 4,000 free mammograms for women in need.