Physical Health El Salvador Project #45559

El Salvador Country-Wide Cervical Cancer Training

by Basic Health International Inc

El Salvador Country-Wide Cervical Cancer Training

Project Report | Nov 4, 2020
Cervical Cancer and COVID-19

By Kate Colligan | Director of Development

Thank you for continuing to support BHI’s impactful work during this difficult time. Cervical cancer is still a significant disease in El Salvador, and, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, our work was temporarily redirected to help stabilize healthcare during the initial crisis.

While the COVID pandemic halted El Salvador’s Cervical Cancer Prevention HPV-based screen-and-treat program; local stakeholders adopted new strategies to resume patient care. Rather than attend a central training, each group underwent theoretical training in socially-distanced rooms. Program activities will begin in November. Patient screening resumed in October, but at a slower pace of 10 patients per day rather than 20.

This is all very timely as the World Health Organization (WHO) is officially launching the Global Strategy to Accelerate the Elimination of Cervical Cancer on November 17th. BHI is proud to be part of the official launch. Please mark your calendars, wear teal in support of survivors, and follow our social media on this historic day.

We are all looking forward to ending 2020 on a high note. BHI will be participating in GlobalGiving’s Giving Tuesday on December 1^st, and we hope you will join us in raising the remaining $17k needed to continue training health promoters, nurses and physicians in cervical cancer prevention. Together we can end cervical cancer.

Thank you,

Your friends at Basic Health International

Permalink

Jul 7, 2020
El Salvador Country-Wide Cervical Cancer Training

By Kate Colligan | Director of Development

Since our last report, BHI has shifted our efforts in order to respond to the current global pandemic which has affected countless agencies and non-profit healthcare providers. Before COVID, we were training El Salvadoran clinicians to work in the rural areas where women are most vulnerable to dying of cervical cancer. As of late March our GlobalGiving project received over $6k of funding toward the $30k goal needed for the project’s cervical cancer training to screen 43,000+ women in the Central and Paracentral regions of El Salvador. Within days of our campaign to fund this effort, El Salvador went into government enforced lockdown and is just now making plans to emerge slowly from quarantine.

The country has been hit hard by the pandemic. During quarantine BHI has been working on the front lines with the El Salvador Ministry of Health and other non-profit health agencies to manage the spread of the disease. BHI is currently focusing on providing COVID testing as we work to validate a rapid test that can be used in low resource settings. Our goal is to stabilize the country’s health so that we can return to cervical cancer screening. Until COVID recedes, cancer patients are at especially high risk.

BHI is using a rapid test in El Salvador to screen approximately 1,000 individuals to determine the test’s feasibility in a low resource area. BHI has the full cooperation of the Ministry of Health in El Salvador. The immediate impact of this study will be to move on to widespread population testing, making it safer to resume cancer care and screening. Lab infrastructures created during our COVID work will have long term impact beyond the pandemic when it can be used for the detection of HPV, HIV, and many other diseases.

Thank you for continuing to support BHI’s impactful research. Cervical cancer is still a very significant disease in El Salvador, and we are working to raise the remaining $24k to continue training health promoters, nurses and physicians in cervical cancer prevention. We will screen and treat 43k+ women as soon as it is safe enough to do so, donations toward this effort are still necessary and important - please continue to give.

We ask that you follow your local COVID-19 guidelines and stay well,

Your friends at Basic Health International

Permalink

Mar 11, 2020
Health Promoter Story

By Dinora | Health Promoter

‹ 1 2 3

About Project Reports

Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.

If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.