PINCC: Prevention International - No Cervical Cancer

The 2010 Walkathon was a fundraiser for this not-for-profit local organizaton.

PINCC takes a mobile gynecology clinic with a volunteer staff of doctors and counselors to remote and underserved areas in Central America and Africa. We provide sensitive, culturally integrated education, in their own language, to both patients and health care workers. We return every six months to each site, to follow up treated women and continue the training of health workers. Local agencies provide interpreters, drivers, and assistants. Because we are a mobile clinic, we can reach rural areas where there is little access to such care. Women frequently walk many hours to be seen, and we are able to treat them in one visit with a 90% or better assurance of cure. But the most important part is establishing a sustainable program that will continue to serve these communities. Our protocol was developed by the Alliance for Cervical Cancer Prevention. It has been proven both more effective and affordable, and avoids the problems of expense, poor results, and loss to follow-up of Pap-based systems.

There is no charge to either the agencies we visit or their clients. It costs us only about $15 to see and treat a woman in Central America or Africa. For the local health system, the cost per woman whose life is saved by the program we establish is close to zero, when one considers the avoided cost of Paps, repeat appointments, operating costs, treatment of cervical cancer, and hospital support of women during their painful deaths.

PINCC trains local health care workers in gynecology examination, visual screening with acetic acid (VIA), cryotherapy (freezing of pre-cancer cells) and LEEP (electrosurgical treatment). All of these are performed in simple outpatient settings. We further train and supervise the local medical personnel over several visits, to ensure they are competent and confident in these skills. We donate the cryotherapy and LEEP equipment to these sites when training is completed, thus enabling local providers to continue and spread the work. The resulting programs can provide 1000-3000 screening exams per year.

PINCC is partnering with hospitals, universities, medical schools and government agencies in several countries to promote awareness, affect policy and extend the implementation of these techniques.


Contact:
Kay Taylor, MD, FACOG, Executive Director
P.O. Box 13081, Oakland, CA 94661
Telephone and FAX 510-452-2542
Email: admin@pincc.org
Website:www.pincc.org

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