Nine women who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty's (NCRHA) Great Pap Smear Cam­paign are to­day thank­ing God for the "life sav­ing" process af­ter be­ing re­ferred for ad­di­tion­al tests.

The screen­ing ex­er­cise was aimed at iden­ti­fy­ing can­cer in the ear­ly stages and rec­om­mend­ing ef­fec­tive treat­ment.

Of­fi­cials con­firmed the women are be­ing treat­ed by doc­tors at the Mt Hope Women’s Hos­pi­tal, and ac­cord­ing to re­ports, the cas­es have all been marked as treat­able giv­en the ear­ly stage of the dis­ease.

It was said that the pa­tients had al­so ex­pressed re­lief that the screen­ing was able to catch this silent dis­ease be­fore it im­pact­ed more sig­nif­i­cant­ly on their lives.

Dur­ing the cam­paign, more than 375 women were screened by med­ical pro­fes­sion­als at the Mt Hope Women’s Cen­tre.

The ini­tia­tive was the first act in the NCRHA's com­pre­hen­sive strat­e­gy to ad­dress the up­surge in can­cers of the re­pro­duc­tive or­gans in women in T&T.

An­oth­er ini­tia­tive has been sched­uled for Sep­tem­ber 29 at the same venue.

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said "sta­tis­tics have shown that more of our younger women are be­ing di­ag­nosed with cer­vi­cal can­cer which in­creas­es their risk of mor­bid­i­ty.

"Some­one’s moth­er, some­one’s wife, some­one’s sis­ter or aunt was saved through this ini­tia­tive and we will con­tin­ue our fight against can­cer and oth­er NCDs (non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases) af­fect­ing our women, just as we have re­duced ma­ter­nal deaths to ze­ro across the health­care sys­tem.”

NCRHA's CEO Davlin Thomas said the re­sults rep­re­sent­ed an­oth­er pro­gres­sive step in their thrust to push back NCDs.

He said, "As seen with our oth­er out­reach pro­grammes such as Walk The Talk, In Touch, Ready For The Road and Broth­er’s Keep­er, ear­ly de­tec­tion and treat­ment al­lows us the op­por­tu­ni­ty to not on­ly iden­ti­fy high-risk cas­es that may have gone un­no­ticed, but al­so to en­gage and treat per­sons who may be pre­dis­posed to can­cers and oth­er life-threat­en­ing dis­eases.

"The au­thor­i­ty’s fo­cus on pri­ma­ry care has re­sult­ed in more than 15,000 per­sons be­ing screened through our out­reach pro­grams and we were able to de­liv­er ear­ly care to pa­tients who would have need­ed emer­gency care."

Thomas said al­though cer­vi­cal can­cer screen­ings are avail­able on week­days at the fa­cil­i­ty, this par­tic­u­lar ini­tia­tive tar­get­ed women un­able to get time off from work or fam­i­ly du­ties dur­ing the week.

NCRHA's Chair­man Steve De Las paid trib­ute to the nurs­es, doc­tors and sup­port staff for giv­ing up their week­end to help fa­cil­i­tate the ini­tia­tive.