January is Cervical Health Awareness Month, but it’s not just a month to learn more about cervical cancer, it’s about learning how to prevent it. Since the 1950s, there’s been in increased effort to raise awareness for prevention screening, and from 1955 to 1992, the cervical cancer incidence and death rates declined by 60 percent.1
But there’s still work to be done, as the NIH estimates that over 12,000 women will still be diagnosed with cervical cancer in 2015.1
Our own Priya Raja spoke about cervical cancer awareness on the blog about a year ago, and she stressed the importance of Pap smears and making them available to all women around the world. During January, the awareness focus will be on preventative screening as well as cervical cancer itself, because as Priya said, “being screened just once can reduce the likelihood of having cancer.”
You can learn more by checking out the National Cervical Cancer Coalition’s website and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s infographic on cervical cancer (featured to the right). And if you’ve been recently diagnosed with either HPV or cervical cancer, reach out to others like you in the PatientsLikeMe community.
Share this post on Twitter and help spread the word for cervical health.
1 http://report.nih.gov/nihfactsheets/viewfactsheet.aspx?csid=76
Thanks for sharing. A great guide to knowing when to get a check up. I didn’t actually know that HPV is the leading cause!