Background: In Sudan, the burden of cervical cancer is becoming an emerging issue and ranking as the second leading cause of female cancer. It is estimated that around 1227 cases are diagnosed in the year 2020. The Cervical Cancer Prevention & Research (CCPR) Unit is providing cervical screening using VIA, but the uptake of its services was not satisfactory, around 10-12 clients per month. Building the capacity of health providers in awareness, screening and diagnosis was considered important to scale-up cervical screening services.

About the project: The aim of this project is to increase the uptake of cervical cancer prevention services (screening with VIA training of health providers and educators and availability of training material) at CCPR unit Soba University hospital. The project designed a contextual curriculum to train nurses, doctors and midwives, trained 30 health providers in performing VIA and performed cervical screening using VIA for 250 women. Through 5 community awareness sessions in cervical cancer screening over 40 Community members got information.

Results: Prior to the project, only 12 service providers were trained in VIA. Using the new curriculum developed, this number had increased to 42 providers; a 250% increase. As a consequence of the longer opening hours, the number of women screened using VIA increased from 12-50 per week. As of December 2021, 350 women had completed the screening, with 11 abnormal results who received treatment and programmed for follow-up.