The Gynocular Colposcope saves women’s lives - Where no other colposcopes can reach

Pattie Webster founder and president from the organisation Amazon 

Promise in the USA contacted Gynius as she really wanted to share Amazone Promises’ story and inspire others.

Pattie has been dedicated to the health of the Peruvian people since 1991. She is also the managing field coordinator for Amazon Promise Medical Expeditions and runs the AP Iquitos office.

A few years ago, Amazon Promise received a donation of a traditional colposcope to use in their cervical screening camps in Peru. The practical challenges started immediately; The colposcopt weight of 9kg/20 Ibs and need of constant electricity supply, made it impossible to bring the colposcope to the Amazon and jungle rural areas.

In 2015, Amazon Promise received a new donation that was a game changer for the cervical screening camps. Dr Jim Leonard in California donated a Gynocular mobile colposcope to Amazon Promise, to be used in a cervical cancer screening project taking off during February 2015 in Peru. Later in 2015, dr Andrew T Goldstein from New York bought another Gynocular to be used in the cervical screening program together with the Triage to Diagnose cervical cancer screening application.

The project started in Iquitos, also known as Iquitos City, the capital city of the Maynas Province and Loreto Region, where Iquitos is the largest metropolis in the Peruvian Amazon and the sixth most populous city of Peru.

Iquitos is known as the "capital of the Peruvian Amazon." The city is located in the Great Plains of the Amazon Basin, surrounded by the Amazon, Nanay and Itaya rivers. Overall, it constitutes Metropolitan Iquitos, a conurbation of 471,993 inhabitants consisting of four districts: Iquitos, Punchana, Belén, and San Juan Bautista.

The 10 days cervical screening outreach camps started in Belén, a sprawling river community of some 74,000 people, lacking the most basic services required for human health. To improve the health service, Amazon Promise built a 2000-square-foot clinic in the middle of the poorest area of Belén, with the goal to provide free services at the clinic at least twice per month. This goal requires operational funding as well as help from health care workers, students, nurses and doctors.

In the first 2 days of screening in city areas, 52 women were screened for cervical cancer and 11(21%) were diagnosed on colposcopy with high grade cervical lesions and directly treated. During the second 8 days period, 52 women were screened in the Amazonas jungle, 2(3%) women were diagnosed with high grade lesions and received treatment at site.

These results show several different important outcomes. First of all, the screening camps in the city area showed an unexpected, extremely high number of women with abnormal cervixes and in need of treatment. Also, the women living in isolated communites in Amazonas Rios Marañón next to River Marañón along the Amazon River, had less risk of high grade lesions, but could be reached and diagnosed with the Gynocular. Also, the Gynocular could endure difficult transportation and work perfectly at the rural screening camps.

Amazon Promise continue to deliver health care to those in most need, despite the challenges of funding, logistics and unpredictable environment. Amazon Promise have diagnosed and treated over 4,569 individuals during 2015; reaching those too poor to afford even government-subsidized medical care.

Amazon Promise continues its cervical cancer screening and treatment program to battles the shocking high urban incidence of cervical pre-cancerous lesions.

At Gynius, we feel proud to receive feed-back on how our products makes real difference. What we create, enables others to save lives.

If you have a Gynocular story you want to share with us or if you want to get more information about the Gynocular, please contact us on info@gynocular.com