Every year, more than 250,000 women die of cervical cancer, nearly 85 percent of them in poor and middle-income countries. Decades ago, it killed more American women than any other cancer; now it lags far behind cancers of the lung, breast, colon and skin.
Nurses using the new procedure, developed by experts at the Johns Hopkins medical school in the 1990s and endorsed last year by the World Health Organisation, brush vinegar on a woman’s cervix. It makes precancerous spots turn white. They can then be immediately frozen off with a metal probe cooled by a tank of carbon dioxide, available from any Coca-Cola bottling plant.
The procedure is one of a wide array of inexpensive but effective medical advances being tested in developing countries. New cheap diagnostic and surgical techniques, insecticides, drug regimens and prostheses are already beginning to save lives — via redwolf.newsvine.com
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