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Dr Everton Mcintosh, Senior Medical Officer, Mandeville Regional Hospital
By Courtney Morgan
A noticeable increase in cervical cancer has prompted renewed calls from doctors at Mandeville Regional Hospital for women to get their pap smears done in a timely manner to help reduce the number of cases.
Transmission of the Human papillomavirus (HPV) has long been linked to unsafe or unprotected sex, and Dr Everton Mcintosh, Senior Medical Officer at Mandeville Regional is encouraging early screening for cervical cancer to improve survival rates.
Stressing that cervical cancer is the second most common form of cancer in females, after breast cancer, "and accounts for significant morbidity and mortality, "he warned against delays in getting screened.
"Prevention is better than cure; that principle still applies, and so you want to catch it in the early stages before it gets (worse)... or if you catch it early enough, it can be treated by surgery."
"Unfortunately," he said, most cases are caught only when the cancer is too advanced - "talking about stage 3/stage 4, advanced cancer, where sometimes surgery is not an option."
In contrast, he said, if caught in the early stage of the cancer "surgery can actually be curative."
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