Family Health Ministries Opens First HPV Lab in Haiti

FOSREF training

QIAGEN Senior Applications Specialist Cynthia Jones trained FOSREF lab technicians this summer on how to use the HC2 assay, the most advanced HPV screening technology available.

Published October 15, 2013, last updated on April 9, 2018 under Research News

With support from the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund and in partnership with Fondation pour la Santé Reproductrice et l’Education Familiale, or FOSREF, DGHI partner organization Family Health Ministries (FHM) has opened the first HPV screening lab in Haiti. The opening is a milestone in improving health care for Haitian women, who are six times more likely to die from cervical cancer than women living in the United States.

With the opening of the new lab, the samples can be processed at the lab located in the FOSREF clinic in Port-Au-Prince. This significantly reduces the time between when a woman is screened and when the results are available.

“We are pleased to have been able to support the Haitian healthcare system and now, independent of outside assistance, Haitian leadership can move forward in scaling what was once a small program into a national cervical cancer screening program,” said Kathy Walmer, executive director of FHM and adjunct assistant professor of global health at DGHI.

Since 2007, FHM has screened more than 12,000 Haitian women for HPV using the new testing technology. The effort supports FHM’s HPV screening program and the NGO’s overall mission to support Haitian communities in building healthy families.

Learn about the prevalence of HPV in Haiti in a new study by FHM Chairman/Founder David Walmer. Jackie Ndirangu, an alumna of the Duke Master of Science in Global Health, is a study co-author. 

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