Period app privacy, eliminating cervical cancer and tackling the surgery gender gap

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Health Report 29 min 2 speakers 3 chapters transcribed 1 hour ago

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What is the focus of this special Health Report episode on women’s health?

Unknown 0:02

This is an ABC Podcast.

Olivia Willis 0:06

Hi, and welcome to the Health Report with me, Olivia Willis. I'm sitting in for Norman Swan today with a special edition of the programme looking at women's health and women in medicine ahead of International Women's Day this Friday. Today on the programme, medicine's gaping gender gap. 60% of Australian medical students are women, and yet they account for just 13% of senior surgeons. So, what's driving women out of the operating theatre? Plus the women's health tech boom. Women are increasingly using apps to track their menstrual cycle and to monitor their health. But we're handing over a lot of, well, very sensitive information in the process. So should we be worried? More on that later in the show.

Olivia Willis 0:46

But first up, cervical cancer. Australia is on track to become the first country in the world to eliminate cervical cancer, a disease that kills a quarter of a million women around the world every year. The World Health Organization has dubbed it one of the gravest threats to women's lives. And last year it called for global efforts to scale up vaccination and screening programs. Now, an Australian team is working with local health clinics in Malaysia to deliver cervical screening. And they're taking an innovative approach, using self-collected HPV or human papillomavirus tests to overcome cultural barriers. Associate Professor Marion Savile is Executive Director of the VCS Foundation, a leading nonprofit helping to deliver the project, and I spoke with her earlier.

Olivia Willis 1:31

Marion, welcome to the Health Report.

Marion Saville 1:33

Thanks for having me.

Olivia Willis 1:35

Let's start with the situation here at home. Australia is on track to eliminate cervical cancer. Presumably that's because of our national immunisation program, but also because of the changes to the national screening program in twenty seventeen. That's when we went from uh papsmears to HPV tests.

Marion Saville 1:51

Yeah, that's right. So it's a combination of very high and early HPV vaccination compared to other countries around the world, together with our change from cytology-based screening to HPV-based screening, which is predicted to give us about 30% better incidence and mortality than we currently have. So when you bring that together with vaccination, we should have cervix cancer down to a rate that's considered eliminated.

Olivia Willis 2:20

Okay, so it's a pretty optimistic picture really for us. Uh, but in many parts of the world that's not the case. There were nearly six hundred thousand new cases of cervical cancer last year. Where do we need to scale up vaccine coverage and screening programs?

Marion Saville 2:37

So this is really an equity problem. We've controlled cervix cancer with screening historically, and we've added to that with vaccination. And I think it's so uncommon in Australia, this cancer now, that most people don't know anyone who's had it. But you don't need to go far from Australia to see where that is not the case, where those preventative services have not been available. So this is really a problem, particularly in low and middle-income countries. In our region, Papua New Guinea, many of the uh countries of the Pacific Islands and up into Asia are struggling to provide the services to prevent this cancer. Treatment remains a problem, so radiotherapy is critical and palliative care is critical.

Marion Saville 3:16

Many of these women are dying terrible deaths without adequate pain control and with quite a lot of social isolation and in some settings it's quite a shameful cancer.

Olivia Willis 3:26

And is it about lack of resources, cost of vaccine? What's the kind of major barriers to access?

Marion Saville 3:31

At its heart it's a resourcing problem. There are also systems problems and expertise problems. And I think one of the obligations we have in Australia, having really had access to good political support and good funding, is to offer our expertise to our neighbours.

Olivia Willis 3:47

Are there countries around the world where because of cultural barriers access to screening remains an issue?

Why is Australia on track to eliminate cervical cancer and how did the screening program change?

Marion Saville 3:53

We see that to a certain extent in Australia. We know from our Victorian work that 80% of women who get cervix cancer in Australia either haven't been screened or are very overdue with their screening.