About 90% of cervical cancer cases associated with women cannot be treated in the country’s health facilities because of the advanced stage of the disease, Dr Peter Baffoe, a gynecologist at the Bolgatanga Regional Hospital, has said.

Dr Baffoe, the Medical Director of the Bolgatanga Hospital, said this at a Regional Health Forum organized by the Coalition of NGOs in Health under the theme “Reproductive Health-What the Youth Should Know” in Bolgatanga.

He said the situation was worrying and advised women to always visit health facilities twice in a year to undergo cervical cancer screening so that they could seek early treatment if detected.

He said there were only two health facilities - Kumasi and Accra - that treat the disease and stressed the need for the people in the Region to take the issue seriously by attending the health facilities for the screening exercise, to avoid travelling long distances to seek treatment.

Dr Baffoe explained that cervical cancer is a sexually transmitted disease and that in the advanced countries and in some African countries, female children are injected against the disease when they are as young as 13 to 26 years which prevented them from getting the disease.

He said currently, Ghana, Senegal and Kenya were conducting trials at the Navrongo Health Research Centre on a vaccine on cervical cancer and expressed the hope that by the close of the year, when it is finished and approved by the Food and Drugs Board, it would be administered in health institutions in Ghana.

He said unlike breast cancer that had been given much education, cervical cancer was not known, and there was the need for adequate public education to be mounted on the disease for people to go for the screening and to seek early treatment.

The Upper East Regional Director of the Environmental Protection Agency, Mrs Zenabu Wasai-king, who spoke on the topic” Sanitation and the Environment, said diseases such as malaria, typhoid, cholera among others could be eliminated if good sanitation practices are observed.

Mr. Alagskomah Asakeya Noble, Regional Vice Chairman of the Coalition of NGOs in Health, explained that the reason for organizing the Health Forum was to brainstorm on how to tackle adolescent and reproductive health issues particularly teenage pregnancy and illegal abortion.

He said the Coalition within the first quarter of this year carried out a number of activities including Maternal Health, HIV/AIDS, Drug and Substance Abuse in various districts in the region. **