Cape Town - Only a minority of women with HIV are being screened for cervical cancer despite their high chance of contracting the disease, according to a top health expert.
Health authorities need to ensure that these women receive pap smears to reduce the impact of what is considered the most deadly form of cancer among South African women, killing as many as 3 500 a year.
Professor Hannah Simonds, the head of radiation and oncology at Stellenbosch University, said HIV-positive women were more likely to develop cervical cancer.
Managing the two diseases posed serious challenges, she added.
Simonds described co-infection with HIV and human papilloma virus (HPV), which is responsible for most cervical cancers, as a “cruel combination”.
“HPV infection in women with HIV is at least five times more likely to develop into cancer, while cervical cancer in HIV-positive women indicates the progression from HIV to Aids, and is a so-called Aids-defining illness,” she said.
Although antiretroviral treatment (ART) has reduced Aids-related deaths and opportunistic infections by a big margin and had prolonged lives, Simonds argued that it had not reduced the incidence of cervical cancer.
“Data from oncology departments in the country shows that the large-scale rollout of ART has had no impact on the number of cervical cancer cases presenting to the six national oncology units in South Africa.”
Although the national rollout of a cervical cancer vaccine for schoolgirls last year will be beneficial, the effects of the vaccine were not immediate and, in the meantime, many women would die of the disease, she said.
Too few women were receiving pap smears as part of a national free screening programme which offers the test to women between the ages of 30 and 50 once a decade.
The smears scan for abnormal cell activity in the cervix – often a precursor of cancer.
HIV co-infection increased the chances of death from cervical cancer. Research was needed to develop more effective methods of managing this, said Simonds.
September is cervical cancer awareness month.
Cape Argus