1. Can A Woman Survive Cervical
Cancer?
- Sirisha Akshinthala

2. The deadliest of all!
• Out of all cancers that affect the people in India, especially in
women, cervical cancer holds the position of the most
common and the deadliest.
• Cervical cancer is the cancer of the mouth of the uterus called
cervix.
• Essentially, it is a cancer that is caused at the neck of the
womb and infects the cervix.

3. • The virus alters the behavior of the cells and over the years
can turn them malignant.
• This is the commonest cancer in India surpassing even breast
cancer.
• It is a possibility for all sexually active women to contract this
disease.
• According to the recent statistics, one women (Indian) dies of
cervical cancer for every 7 minutes.

4. What causes Cervical cancer?
• Cervical cancer can also be caused by rubbing in private
sensitive parts which is unnoticeable.
• Basically, cervical cancer is a sexually transmitted disease
where 80% of all cases are caused due to the Human
Papillomavirus (HPV) which is transmitted through sexual
contact (normal, oral and anal), and it applicable to both
heterosexual as well as homosexual relationships.

5. The risks
• It is very difficult to find out how and who has transmitted
HPV in the infected women.
• Most women never even know they have HPV, or that they
are passing it to their partner.
• There are some other risk facts which may lead to cervical
cancer, like having sex at an early age with many sexual
partners, undergoing many pregnancies, to avoid pregnancy
by using birth control pills for 5 or more years and most
commonly by consuming any form of tobacco.

6. Curable, is it?
• Yes, the three main treatments available today are surgery,
radiotherapy and chemotherapy.
– In case of a surgery, the chances of a woman conceiving a
child later in her life are dismal.
– Radiotherapy and chemotherapy have not shown drastic
miracles so far in India with respect to saving the ailing
person’s life as it has below average success rate.

7. Prevention is better than cure
• There are some preventive measures like the cervical
cancer vaccine as it is the first vaccine ever designed to
prevent cancer.
• It is recommended to girls aged 11 to 12 years as it allows a
girl’s immune system to be activated before she’s likely to
encounter HPV.
• Next comes delayed sexual activity; in precise, waiting to
have sex until they get older that can help them to avoid
HPV.
• The most common one is usage of condoms which when
used correctly, can lower the HPV infection rate by about
70%.

8. Be sure
• There are very important tests for women that should be
done once in 3 years as they detect the presence of this
cancer.
• The tests
– Pap test
– HPV test
– Colposcopy test.
• These are minimal in cost and are available in many parts of
the country.

9. C for cure!!
• At the end there is an interesting fact that cancer can be
cured and its survival rates are much better in women as
compared to men.
• Hence cervical cancer is curable if the women are aware of
prevention methods as its causes are not very clear and are
difficult to identify.
• Slowly, we can overcome the obstacle presented by the
cancer by following all these precautionary measures and
prevent the disease.
• Let us hope that this happens very soon in our country and
there will be nothing to be dreaded about the C-word
anymore.

10. • Read the detailed report on Can A Woman Survive Cervical
Cancer? on http://bit.ly/N9f1vS