Bundoora doctor starts Pacific Island cervical cancer screening

Bundoora doctor Nicola Fitzgerald is on a mission to make cervical screening accessible in the Pacific. “Caring for these often young mothers with cervix cancer feels absolutely hopeless,” she says.

Dr Nicola Fitzgerald with a woman in Fiji.

I work at Northpark Hospital in Bundoora and also lead the Pacific Island Cervical Cancer Initiative.

Meri is 42, a mother of six and a subsistence farmer.

She has never had a pap smear.

She can’t afford the $2 bus ride and, since the bleeding she is experiencing isn’t too bad, walks two hours to hospital.

On arrival, Meri’s diagnosis is advanced, inoperable cervix cancer.

Her two-year-old and four-year-old are climbing over her bed as I give Meri the terrible news. Meri’s story is familiar where I work as an obstetrician and gynaecologist in countries such as Fiji, Vanuatu, Samoa and Kiribati. Caring for these often young mothers with cervix cancer feels absolutely hopeless.

Cervix cancer accounts for about 12 per cent of all cancers for women in the region, but it’s only 1 per cent in Australia.

Dr Nicola Fitzgerald at a clinic in the Pacific.

Sadly, due to funding and doctor shortages, remoteness, and poor follow-up, there is no effective island-based cervical cancer screening, so fewer than 10 per cent of women get tested.

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Situations such as Meri’s prompted me to create PICCSI: the Pacific Island Cervical Cancer Screening Initiative.

Cervical cancer is caused by the virus human papillomavirus.

PICCSI uses a modern test to detect HPV on the spot, so women get results and appropriate treatment immediately, in their own communities.

PICCSI volunteers screened 300 Fijian women in a pilot study last year, and are returning in August to continue.

Organising this international project is a formidable task, with long-term sustainability the challenge.

Government funds weren’t renewed this year, so we are working hard to raise funds privately.

But it’s well worth it, seeing the smiling faces of the local women whose lives have been touched.

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