August 2006
God’s Own Time
I am usually a bit irritated by phone calls to the operating room for me while I am in the midst of surgery. But this time, the call was a breath of fresh air. “This is Mr. Landis calling from St. Luke’s Hospital in Zomba. I am a former student of yours at Malamulo College of Medicine. I am interested in joining the effort to prevent cervical cancer and want you to teach me how to do it.”
As one of only ten obstetrician/gynecologists working in Malawi, a country with 12 million people, I am interested in helping as many health professionals as possible learn about ways to improve health services to women. A major health concern for women, in addition to HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis, is the growing number of women diagnosed with invasive cervical cancer. Prevention of this type of cancer in developed countries like the United States has been very successful through Pap smears offered widely to women. The Pap smears enable health workers to identify early patches on the cervix that could become cancer in the future and offer early treatment to remove the abnormal areas. Sadly, this method of prevention is not available to women in developing countries.
Pap smears require an infrastructure which is simply not in existence in countries like Malawi. The samples collected from women must go to a qualified laboratory where trained technicians can read the slides. There must be a system of communication between the lab, the health provider, and the women. Eighty-five percent of women in Malawi live in rural villages where there is no electricity, no telephone, and no mail delivery. There are only three pathologists in Malawi and no specialized technicians to read Pap smears. So this means that up until five years ago there was practically no medical effort to prevent cervical cancer.
The good news is that there is now a growing program to prevent cervical cancer through a method that lends itself nicely to Malawi. This method involves visualizing the cervix with a light source—this can even be a flashlight—and then applying household vinegar to the cervix. The cervix is then inspected for areas that turn a white color with vinegar. These areas have a possibility of becoming cancerous in five or ten years. They can be easily removed by freezing them with a cryotherapy machine, thereby effectively preventing a future case of cervical cancer.
So, among my other duties as a mission co-worker of the Presbyterian Church, I have become an advocate for promoting women’s health by preventing cervical cancer. Recently I participated in a training workshop sponsored by an international non-governmental organization where health providers were trained to work in the most remote areas of Malawi in preventing this disease. So I plan in the future to visit these extremes of the country to supervise and encourage the workers who have been trained.
One of the important lessons I have learned in the past sixteen years in Africa is the importance of patience in waiting for anything to happen. This particular program is only five years old. I think the next five years will tell the tale of whether this program will become a part of the health care system in Malawi. One Old Testament prophet even has some advice for us modern-day Americans: “These things I plan won’t happen right away. Slowly, steadily, surely the time approaches when the vision will be fulfilled. If it seems slow, wait patiently, for it will surely take place. It will not be delayed” (Habakkuk 2:3).
Sue
The 2006 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 337 |
