Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Sharon Row­ley, the wife of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, says she has dealt with the grief of los­ing friends and fam­i­ly to can­cer and is urg­ing women to do the nec­es­sary tests to de­tect the ear­ly signs of the dis­ease.

Mrs Row­ley, al­so an ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber of the Spous­es of Caribbean Lead­ers Ac­tion Net­work (SCLAN), made the ap­peal while ad­dress­ing vis­i­tors to a health fair at the Blan­chisseuse Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, yes­ter­day.

The fair, ti­tled the Great Pap Smear Ini­tia­tive, is in­tend­ed to raise aware­ness of the im­por­tance of pap smears in de­tect­ing the ear­ly signs of cer­vi­cal can­cer.

In her open­ing re­marks, Row­ley com­mend­ed the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) for their work in or­gan­is­ing the event and urged women to make full use of fa­cil­i­ties of­fered at the fair.

She said while she did not want to fright­en women about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of can­cer, pap smears were im­por­tant in de­tect­ing any ab­nor­mal­i­ties that could lead to can­cer and pos­si­bly save lives.

“I have had dear friends die from cer­vi­cal can­cer. The thing is, cer­vi­cal can­cer is pre­ventable, and that is why we are here to­day, and that is why I am en­cour­ag­ing you to mount those steps, each and every woman, young and old, go up there and have your­selves screened and test­ed.

“It is not that I am try­ing to scare you, I am say­ing to you go up­stairs so that if there is an is­sue, it can be at­tend­ed to as soon as pos­si­ble.”

Row­ley said since the launch of the pap smear ini­tia­tive in 2018, the lives of nine women were saved. She said once le­sions are found by doc­tors, treat­ment would be made avail­able.

In T&T, she said, 125 women are di­ag­nosed with cer­vi­cal can­cer an­nu­al­ly.

Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son al­so at­tend­ed the event and en­cour­aged women to make use of the fa­cil­i­ties.

She al­so thanked the NCRHA and the SCLAN for their sup­port of the ini­tia­tive.

“If you can have your can­cer de­tect­ed ear­ly, it saves lives.

“I know peo­ple are hes­i­tant and may be sus­pi­cious about whether or not to get it done, but un­der­stand the cost of it if you are to go to the hos­pi­tal. It is free here to­day. Please cap­i­talise on it.”

Al­so at­tend­ing the event was Mel­lisa San­tokhi-Seenacher­ry, the wife of Suri­namese Pres­i­dent Chan San­tokhi, who al­so re­it­er­at­ed the need for ear­ly test­ing.

“Most of us have a fam­i­ly mem­ber pass away by this, and it could have been pre­vent­ed by test­ing.

“The ini­tia­tive was start­ed to bring it to the ladies, to bring it to the com­mu­ni­ty, and it’s still a hur­dle.”

CEO of the NCRHA Davlin Thomas praised the ef­forts of SCLAN in rais­ing aware­ness on the need for reg­u­lar check-ups.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia Ltd af­ter the event, Thomas said the num­ber of women get­ting pap smears was pro­gres­sive­ly in­creas­ing.

“We start­ed in 2018, at those ini­tia­tives we get an av­er­age of 800 to 1,000 women. Pri­or to those it was pret­ty low.

“In De­cem­ber 2022 we had a pap smear ini­tia­tive with 900 women and 11 per cent of those women need­ed fur­ther care and three per cent of them, if we didn’t get them at that point, they would have been in some dif­fi­cul­ties.”

The fair al­so of­fered man­i­cures and pedi­cures for women and ba­sic health screen­ing, with en­ter­tain­ment from Iw­er George and Ben­jai.