Published: January 14, 2008 06:18 pm            

Askins launches campaign to pass on cervical cancer info

OKLAHOMA CITY — Heather Nottingham believes a shot in the arm as a child would have been a lot easier than the surgery recovery she underwent.

The Rush Springs woman discovered she had cervical cancer through an irregular pap test she gets checked annually. She caught the cancer early, had a hysterectomy and never had to take medication or be treated for cancer.

But complications caused by surgery left a four-and-a-half-month recovery time, the 32-year-old said.

“Why do it? If you can get a shot when you’re 14 or 11, why not?” Nottingham said. “It (surgery) takes a lot from you.”

Nottingham, along with Lt. Gov. Jari Askins, gathered with medical and health officials at the Center for Healthy Living in Oklahoma City on Monday to get the word out on how children and adults can prevent, detect and treat cervical cancer or the virus thought to cause the cancer.

January is Cervical Cancer Awareness month and Askins kicked off the national campaign called “Pass it on” to get information out to women in the state about cervical cancer and to get young girls vaccinated before they are sexually active.

Dr. Joan Walker, a gynecologic oncologist with the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, moved from Los Angeles to Oklahoma in 1990 because of the high rate of cervical cancer.

“I have been very disappointed in the ability we’ve had in counteracting that problem,” she said. “So we have about 200 to 250 cervical cancers per year and about 65 deaths per year since 1990 when I got here. We have gone down now to about 150 cervical cancers per year and 60 deaths per year. So we’re doing a little bit better in terms of catching things earlier, but not good enough.”

Cervical cancer in most cases is caused by the human papillomavirus, linked to sexual activity. The virus can lay dormant in someone’s body for years and does not produce symptoms.

Walker said it is important to vaccinate 11-year-old and 12-year-old girls before they become sexually active.

“We don’t want to wait to 14, 15, 16, 18,” she said. “Unfortunately, if we don’t vaccinate against HPV before the first contact in sexual activity, it doesn’t work. And unfortunately, 16-year-olds are having sex. We can’t ignore that.”

One out of 20 girls ages 11 or 12 have been vaccinated in Oklahoma. About 23,000 were vaccinated in 2007. The vaccine was FDA approved in June 2006, Walker said.

Walker also encouraged annual pap tests in women ages 21 to 30. After age 30 through age 65 or 70 she wants women to seek DNA testing specifically for the virus at least every three years because the pap test has a high false negative rate.

Oklahoma is ranked 11th in the nation in the number of cervical cancer deaths and 10th in the nation in the number of women diagnosed with cervical cancer, according to the Oklahoma State Department of Health.

The average age for women with abnormal pap tests is 25 years old, the average age for women with cervical cancer is 35 and deaths occur on average to women between the ages of 45 and 50, according to Adeline Yerkes, chief of the Chronic Disease Service through the state health department.

“It’s not an old woman’s disease,” she said.

About 80 percent of Oklahoma women have had a pap test in the past three years, something that she believes is not good enough.

“It’s not OK that after you have your last child you don’t go in for a regular pelvic exam and having a pap smear and too often we know women make those excuses for themselves,” Yerkes said.

The health department provides vaccines to young women and wants to get more girls to take advantage of the vaccines. The only problem is the cost because not all insurance companies cover the vaccines, Walker said.

Also, in the past two years about 75 women received free treatment for cervical cancer based on income guidelines and insurance guidelines if there is an abnormal pap smear, Yerkes said.

Nottingham never knew anything about cervical cancer before she was diagnosed. She has a 15-year-old daughter and said she intends to get vaccinated. She talks to her daughter about cervical cancer, but doesn’t know if much discussion is going on outside her home.

“I don’t think it’s probably something they talk about at school,” she said.



Jaclyn Houghton is CNHI News Service Oklahoma reporter.

        

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