Skin to skin contact can cause cervical cancer

By Doreen Allotey

THE room where a group of media personnel had gathered became very silent as the resource person, Dr Lynda Decker of Franklyn Medical Services , gave some startling information about Cervical Cancer.
The media had been invited by the Pharmaceutical Society of Ghana and GlaxoSmithKline, a pharmaceutical company for the purpose of making as advocates. The two institutions wanted to give the media personnel information about the disease for them to educate the public .
The media learnt that “Just by shaking hands with a person carrying the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) , a woman could finally get cervical cancer and die . The very name of the disease shows that only females can get it since they have cervixes and not males but the virus that causes the diseases can be transmitted by both males and females. The manner in which their bodies have been made for reproductive functions, women do facing many challenges and cervical cancer is one of them.
Dr Decker dwelt on “skin to skin contact” as one of the mode of transmission with a simple hand shake as an example . Eversince I have been very wary of those i shake hands with since I cannot tell by facial expression who may or may not be carrying the HPV . I wonder how long I can maintain this attitude in a society where refusal to shake hands could mean that all is not well with you and the one offering his or her hand.
The startling details given by Dr Decker that every sexually active woman is at a risk of cancer infection the HPV type throughout her lifetime and that it is estimated that up to 80 per cent of women will acquire a HPV infection by the age of 50, and up to 50 per cent of these infections will be from a virus type which has the potential to cause cervical cancer.

Dr Decker explained that cervical cancer occurred when abnormal cells on the cervix grew out of control.
“You get HPVnot only by having sex with someone who has it but by having skin to skin contact with the person” she said.
There are many types of the HPV virus but not all of them do cause cervical cancer. Some of them cause genital warts but other types may not produce any symptoms at all.
This means that one can have HPV for years and may not know it. It stays in your body and can lead to cervical cancer years after you have been infected.
There are factors that may play aid the growth of cervical cancer:
Smoking or history of smoking. As Dr Decker explained, smoking seems to make protract HPV infections .
A study shows that one’s risk of cervical cell changes may also increase if the person stays around someone who smokes.
Cervical cell changes are more likely vanish on their own in women who do not smoke.
Having an impaired immune system such as HIV and the use of birth control pills for more than five years also increases a person’s susceptibility.
Dr Decker said cervical cell changes in the cervix develops as a result of persistent infection from the HPV virus. The virus is extremely common and is easily transmitted from skin to skin especially the genital area. This means that the virus could be acquired without penetrative sex or full sexual intercourse and this also means that condoms may not do much by preventing women from acquiring the virus.
In a society where same sex is not strange, an infected female could pass the disease on to another female.
The sad part of the story is that abnormal cervical cell changes in the cervix rarely causes symptoms until it is getting late. The symptoms may only appear when the cell changes grow into cervical cancer.
These symptoms may include bleeding from the vagina which is not due to a change in menstrual cycle that can be explained, and bleeding when something comes into contact with the cervix such as sexual intercourse . Pain during sex and vaginal discharge tinged with blood are some of the symptoms of cervical cancer.

Fortunately there is a way of detecting the disease. This can be done by a test called the Pap Smear test. This means that the only way to prevent the disease from causing havoc is regular tests.
The Pap smear would 80 per cent of the time, show the cell changes before they turn into cancer so that if you have a problem early treatment could be done.

Since condoms are of little help when it comes to prevention of the disease, Dr Decker recommends abstinence or limiting the number of sex partners.

While Pap smear tests play a vital part by detecting the abnormal cells, the screening does not prevent infection of cancer-causing virus types. It is very helpful however because it is only when you have the disease that treatment can commence.
The treatment for cervical cancer includes cryotherapy , hysterectomy, cone biopsy, and laser treatment.

There is however hope for prevention — vaccination. There is a vaccine that may protect a woman against the disease in up to 70 per cent of cervical cancer cases.
According to Dr Decker, evidence from clinical trials had shown that vaccination alongside regular screening could reduce the chance of developing cervical cancer by 94 per cent, compared to no intervention.
Even though Dr Decker is preaching abstinence as a preventive method and the limitation of the number of sexual partners, regular screening seems to be a more helpful approach especially when a common handshake can also transmit the disease.
It is important for women to regularly go for pap tests and seek more information about the vaccine from their doctors in order to save their lives.