About 40,000 cases were not reported – due to corruption and neglect of healthcare – as country looks to build new health system
Brazil passes grim milestone of 600,000 Covid-19 deaths, second only to US
Brazil has officially surpassed the US to become the world’s second most deadly country for cervical cancer in terms of deaths.
A review by the international watchdog of the disease, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), shows that about 900 women die of cervical cancer each day in Brazil.
“If left untreated, cervical cancer kills about one in every 45 women,” said Dr Inacio Lucas Papadopoulos, of IARC’s cancer genetics department, the agency’s office for the prevention of disease and the midwifery.
From prevention to treatment, it is women who carry the burden of cervical cancer Read more
The numbers prompted Brazilian president-elect Jair Bolsonaro, who will take office on 1 January, to comment: “To start building a new health system in Brazil right away in the first 100 days of my administration is going to be very difficult because some years and governments have lost the momentum that is needed.”
About 41,000 cases of cervical cancer are reported to Brazil’s public health system, more than 12 times the rate registered in Britain, according to Dr João Rohrmoser, director of the sexual health project at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
That means that about 40,000 cases are never reported, largely due to corruption and negligence in healthcare, which delayed the diagnosis of cervical cancer, which had been detected by self-examinations, he said.
The “real death rate” is estimated to be around 115 per 100,000 women in Brazil, Bolsonaro said.
“The majority of the death cases from cervical cancer are avoidable deaths that would be stopped if prevention measures and other diseases of the genital tract, including HIV and blood cancers, had been better shared in the country,” the President-elect stated.
The Global Coalition Against Cervical Cancer, founded in 2013, on Friday launched its 10th national medical conference in Rio de Janeiro.
Over 100,000 cases of cervical cancer, about 1,400 of them fatal, are diagnosed every year, the group said.
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