Simple vinegar test to prevent cervical cancer death

A simple vinegar test could prevent 73,000 deaths from cervical cancer worldwide each year.

Wealthy countries have managed to reduce cervical cancer deaths by 80 per cent thanks to the widespread use of regular Pap smears. But cervical cancer remains the leading cause of cancer death among women in India and many other developing countries lacking the money, doctors, nurses or laboratories for widespread screening. The vinegar test, while not perfect, offers a solution to that problem. 

A primary health care worker swabs the woman's cervix with vinegar, which causes pre-cancerous tumours to turn white.The results are known a minute later when a bright light is used to visually inspect the cervix. Aside from the cost savings,the instantaneous results are a major advantage for women in rural areas who might otherwise have to travel for hours to see a doctor.  one of the women who participated in the study, says it saved her life. Many women refused to get screened. Some of them died of cancer later.

This low-tech visual examination cut the cervical cancer death rate by 31 percent, the study found. It could prevent 22,000 deaths in India and 72,600 worldwide each year, researchers estimate. 

India has nearly one-third of the world's cases of cervical cancer - more than 140,000 each year. "It's not possible to provide Pap smear screening in developing countries. We don't have that much money or staff or equipment, so a simpler method had to be found.

Starting in 1998, researchers enrolled 75,360 women to be screened every two years with the vinegar test. Another 76,178 women were chosen for a control, or comparison group that just got cancer education at the start of the study and vouchers for a free Pap test - if they could get to the hospital to have one. Women in either group found to have cancer were offered free treatment at the hospital. Still, this quick and free cancer screening was a hard sell in a deeply conservative country. Social workers were sent into the slums to win people over. 
The study was planned for 16 years, but results at 12 years showed lives were saved with the screening. Hence independent monitors advised offering it to the women in the comparison group. 
More progress against cervical cancer may come from last month's announcement that two companies will drastically lower prices on HPV vaccines for poor countries. Pilot projects will begin in Asia and Africa; the campaign aims to vaccinate more than 30 million girls in more than 40 countries by 2020.