11 June 2019 – The New York Times today published an opinion piece describing a Guatemalan woman’s struggle with the cervical cancer, and using her story to frame the issue worldwide. This is the latest sign of growing awareness of the global challenge of cervical cancer, fresh off a major women’s conference last week at which cervical cancer was highlighted repeatedly.

Mia Armstrong, author of the piece in The Times, is a 2019 Arizona State University graduate and the winner of columnist Nicholas Kristof’s 2019 “win-a-trip” contest, allowing a student to accompany him on a reporting trip and write about it for The Times.

Armstrong’s piece noted the simplicity of the solutions to prevent cervical cancer, from vaccination against HPV (the virus that causes most cases of cervical cancer), to DNA tests for HPV, to screening for and treatment of precancerous lesions before they turn into invasive cervical cancer. All are feasible even in low-resource settings, though more funding is needed to expand access to them.

As stated by Armstrong, “[I]f we can only summon the will”, we can save the lives of women who are vulnerable to cervical cancer – an estimated 311,000 of whom died in 2018. TogetHER and our partners are working to build the political will to eliminate cervical cancer.

Read the opinion piece here: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/10/opinion/guatemala-cervical-cancer.html