Cervical cancer screening in Tamilnadu, India: A feasibility study of training the village health nurse

Uterine cervical cancer is the most common malignancy among females in developing countries, including India. The success of cervical cancer screening programs in North America and Western Europe has been the result of centralized cervical-cytology screening, This is not possible in the villages (n = 17,000) of Tamilnadu where 58 percent of females in rural areas are illiterate, health infrastructure is mediocre, and cervical cytology is unknown. The present study was undertaken to examine if the village health nurse (VHN) could be trained quickly to identify a cervical abnormality by visual inspection so that we could 'down stage' the cancer to earlier stages, more amenable to treatment. VHNs also would be trained to take an adequate Pap smear. A total of 101 VHNs were trained in batches and returned to their villages, Within two years, 6,459 eligible women in the study area were screened. The agreement between the gynecologists and the VHNs in identifying cancer among those with abnormal cervix was 95 percent and 80 percent of the Pap smears taken by VHNs were adequate by WHO criteria, making the feasibility study highly successful.