Cervical cancer screening for 50,000 women in Kolkata, India

The screening prgramme for HPV in Kolkata women is expected to begin by June 2009.

Nearly 50,000 women from Kolkata will be tested for cervical cancer as part of a large-scale-screening programme for the human papillomavirus (HPV) in the state of West Bengal’s capital city.

Human papillomavirus (HPV) has been established as the primary cause of cervical cancer among women.

The screening programme organised jointly by the Dutch assay technology firm Qiagen and the Chittaranjan National Cancer Institute (CNCI) will screen women for HPV and if detected will provide suitable treatment. The cervical cancer screening will take place at community-based mobile field clinics in the villages neighboring Kolkata.

The Kolkatta screening programme named “QIAGENcares Kolkata Project” will use a process referred to as “screen and treat”. In this women, who are diagnosed having cervical cancer or pre-cancer, will be immediately treated at the field clinic – or referred to the CNCI for follow up. Related story: Cervical cancer vaccines in India Gardasil and Cervarix

The cervical cancer screening programme will be officially launched at the opening ceremony of the 2009 Asia-Oceania Research Organization on Genital Infections and Neoplasia (AOGIN) conference in Kolkata on April 25-26. The first screening is  expected to start in June.

Qiagen will provide its hybrid capture 2 (hc2) HPV DNA testing platform technology to screen women for cancer-causing types of HPV. Also known as the digene HPV Test, the diagnostic test will identify women with or at risk for developing cervical cancer.

The digene HPV Test uses advanced molecular diagnostic technologies to identify the presence of the genetic code of 13 high-risk, cancer-causing types of HPV. The digene HPV Test has been studied in clinical trials involving more than 825,000 women worldwide. More than 40 million tests for carcinogenic HPV have been performed with the digene HPV Test, which is recognized as the “gold-standard” in HPV testing, according to a press release issued by Qiagen.

Participating women will also be screened using VIA (visual inspection with acetic acid) as per the Indian National Guidelines for Cervical Screening.

Educational campaigns to raise awareness about HPV, cervical cancer, and other women’s health issues, will also be included in the project. The screening programme will be conducted over 5 years and is expected to reach 50,000 women.

“This project is a great demonstration of how our advanced screening solutions can bring state of the art healthcare to women in all regions of the globe. Kolkata, India is a particularly fitting location to launch this project as India has the world’s highest incidence rate of cervical cancer. We believe that launching this project can play a role in helping to change those statistics. Through the Qiagencares Kolkata collaboration we will increase awareness about cervical cancer prevention and make screening more accessible, two vital ingredients in the effort to reduce cervical cancer rates, said Peer Schatz, CEO of Qiagen.

The Kolkata screening project is a part of Qiagencares, the company’s corporate social responsibility program focused on improving health by providing access to screening methods for infectious diseases in emerging and developing countries.

“We are pleased to work with Qiagen on this cervical cancer screening project. We here at the CNCI see first-hand how serious a threat cervical cancer is to the health of women locally and to Indian society as a whole. We hope this collaboration will help raise awareness of the issue and set an example for other screening projects in the future,” said Dr Jaydip Biswas, director, CNCI.

India has more cervical cancer cases than any other country in the world. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that every year more than 130,000 Indian women are diagnosed with cervical cancer and more than 74,000 die from it. This makes cervical cancer the leading cause of cancer related deaths in India and represents approximately 1/4 of the world’s total cervical cancer cases and mortality. The WHO estimates that only about 5 percent of women in the developing world have been screened for cervical disease in the previous five years, compared to 40-50 percent in the developed world.

The impact of HPV testing on cervical cancer incidence and death in India was demonstrated in an International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) study published in the April 2, 2009 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

The trial evaluated cervical cancer prevention tools in 130,000 women in the Maharashtra state of India, and found HPV testing to be the most effective way to reduce cervical cancer incidence when compared to either Pap (cytology) testing or VIA. The study demonstrated that a single round of HPV testing was associated with a significant reduction in the numbers of advanced cervical cancers and deaths.

Qiagen N.V., a Netherlands holding company, is the leading global provider of sample and assay technologies. Sample technologies are used to isolate and process DNA, RNA and proteins from biological samples such as blood or tissue. Assay technologies are used to make such isolated biomolecules visible. QIAGEN has developed and markets more than 500 consumable products as well as automated solutions for such consumables. The company provides its products to molecular diagnostics laboratories, academic researchers, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, and applied testing customers for purposes such as forensics, animal or food testing and pharmaceutical process control. Qiagen’s assay technologies include one of the broadest panels of molecular diagnostic tests available worldwide. This panel includes the digene HPV Test, which is regarded as the “gold standard” in testing for high-risk types of human papillomavirus, the primary cause of cervical cancer.

The Chittaranjan National Cancer Institute (CNCI) was established by Prof. Subodh Mitra, a gynecological oncologist and inaugurated by Noble Laureate Madam Irene Curie on 12th January, 1950. It is an autonomous Institution under the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India and jointly financed by the Government of India and the Government of West Bengal.