New York City, New York (PRWEB) June 16, 2014
Dr. Miriam Cremer, Founder and President of Basic Health International (BHI), will travel to Zambia this month to speak at the Africa Regional Conference on New Opportunities and Innovations in Cervical Pre-Cancer Prevention: HPV Vaccination, Screening, and Treatment. The conference will be held at the InterContinental Lusaka from June 18 through June 20, 2014.
The conference is a collaboration with Pink Ribbon Red Ribbon, PATH, Cervical Cancer Action, the WHO Regional Office for Africa (WHO/AFRO), and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the United States. The purpose of the meeting is to gather policy makers, health officials, and support staff from around the world to discuss successful cervical cancer programs, to promote innovation to improve programming, and to examine future opportunities using exciting technological advances.
Dr. Cremer has been invited to participate in the 3rd session of the conference, Next Generational Clinical and Diagnostic Technology. Dr. Cremer will speak on the topic of HPV DNA Testing in Latin America and on self-sampling as a method of early detection in the developing world. Dr. Cremer will also partake in a panel discussion on clinical and diagnostic technologies with Dr. Nanthalil Mugala, the Zambian Country Manager at PATH, and Dr. Groesbeck Parham, of the Center for Infection Disease Research in Zambia.
BHI’s approach brings screening and treatment methods directly to high-risk communities by training local health providers in low-tech screening and treatment methods and engaging health promoters in outreach education to promote cervical cancer screening among rural women. In addition, BHI and the Salvadoran Ministry of Health have launched a forward-thinking screening program that utilizes the low-cost HPV DNA, careHPV, to more accurately identify women at-risk for cervical cancer. Since 2006, BHI has screened over 25,000 women for cervical cancer, in addition to training more than 202 health care providers across the Latin American region.
The BHI model has become a standard for cervical cancer prevention programming in Latin America and throughout the developing world. Dr. Cremer is looking forward to the opportunity to share her expertise in cervical cancer screening and treatment in Latin America and the Caribbean with an international community of nonprofit leaders, health care providers, and cancer researchers.