RAM Guyana Cervical Cancer Project

A desperate need in developing countries is the provision of women's health services, such as screenings for cervical cancer and breast cancer, as well as STD prevention and birth control.

RAM is actively involved in providing screenings and treatments both at home and abroad. On a typical US expedition, we provide mammograms, and sometimes Pap smears. Currently, the Guyana project is treating hundreds of village women.

Guyana has the third highest rate of death from cervical cancer in the Western Hemisphere. Cervical cancer is preventable through screening, yet the indigenous women of Guyana have never been screened due to the extreme difficulty encountered in reaching their remote villages.

The RAM Guyana Cervical Cancer Team travels by jeep, plane and ox cart, on foot, and by canoe, to the remote savannahs and rainforests of Guyana to provide medical care for the Amerindian women. Our

volunteers screen for cervical cancer, remove pre-cancerous lesions, perform hysterectomies when necessary, and treat cervical cancer with life-saving radical hysterectomies. The team is also researching new techniques that would replace Pap smear screening and enable women to be diagnosed and treated in one visit.

We have found that the incidence of cervical disease in this previously unscreened population is over ten times higher than that

in the United States. And, while new vaccines for the HPV virus that causes cervical cancer may be effective in the US, our Guyanese patients appear to have different HPV types, which would make immunization ineffective for them. Ongoing reaserch into HPV types will elucidate the nature of cervical disease in our patients.

To make this program sustainable in Guyana, RAM volunteers are also working with the Ministry of Health and the University of Guyana to establish Guyana's first OB/GYN residency program, and with Guyana's medical staff at Georgetown Public Hospital to establish a gynecologic cancer service and
develop Guyana's national cervical cancer screening protocol. To find out more about sustainable continuity of care in Guyana, click here to download a more detailed description (PDF file).

What started as a Pap smear screening program has evolved into a comprehensive cervical cancer and women's health program that can put to good use the skills and knowledge of volunteers in all fields of women's health, pathology, cytology, and even medical anthropology. Join us in the
stark beauty of the Rupununi savannah or the lush, nearly impenetrable rain forest, to improve the health of the indigenous women of Guyana.

Rebecca S. Kightlinger, DO
Volunteer, Director, RAM Guyana Cervical Cancer Team

Assistant Clinical Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology
Adjunct Professor, Center for Global Health
University of Virginia