We need to create more awareness on cervical cancer - Sophia Baah urges

Chief Operating Officer at mPharma, Sophia Baah, has disclosed that more awareness should be created on cervical cancer.

According to her, cervical cancer is most of the time caused by the Human Papilloma Virus(HPV) and it occurs when people are sexually active.

She explained that the only issue is there are certain types that cause cancer and an example is the types 16 and 18 which cause 70% of cervical cancer.

Speaking to Eunice Tornyi on etv Ghana’s African Women’s Voices, Sophia Baah said, “To prevent it from becoming fully blown cancers, abstinence is the best but if you can’t, you need to protect yourself and also test yourself on a regular basis. Both men and women can get it and but we noticed that a lot of women especially have no knowledge about it hence the need to create awareness”.

Citing an example, she emphasised that there was a study done last year in Ghana where women between the ages of 25-64 were tested and about 9.4 million women studies showed that out of that 9.4 million women, only 3% get screened.

“Last year, when they got screened, about 2,300, tested positive for cervical cancer and last year alone 1,800 women died from cervical cancer so it’s a silent killer and it’s the second biggest killer after breast cancer. So, we really need to create awareness around it because when it’s caught early, it’s able to be addressed,” she explained.

She furthered that getting it is also not a death sentence especially when caught early and the process of handling it is quite simple.

“It is important to know your status because if you do, you can do something about it before it gets out of hand. So what we want to do is to really encourage people to get tested” she noted.