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ETiCCS will cooperate with cervical cancer experts in national and international academic institutions as well as with high profile international business. ETiCCS has already been awarded a prestigious grant by the German Ministry of Research and Education to assess in LMICs (Kenya and Ethiopia) the validity of a cutting-edge screening tool for cervical cancer. With SAP, ETiCCS has also secured the support of a world-renowned expert in business software technology, design and production, who developed a state-of-the-art data and information management tool appropriate for fragile infrastructures in LMICs.

SAP, Walldorf, Germany »

University of California, San Francisco »

Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin »

Radboud University, Njmegen »

Jomo Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya »

Moi University, Eldoret, Kenya »

Gondar University, Ethiopia »

Battor Catholic Hospital, Ghana »

Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center and KC Medical University College, Tanzania »

Klinikum Wolfsburg, Germany

Pathologisches Institut, Mannheim

SAP, Walldorf, Germany

Headquartered in Walldorf, Germany, with locations in more than 130 countries, SAP SE is the world leader in enterprise software and software-related services. SAP is at the center of today’s technology revolution, developing innovations that not only help businesses run like never before, but also improve the lives of people everywhere. As the market leader in enterprise application software, SAP helps companies of all sizes and industries run better. The Design and Co-Innovation Center, based at the AppHaus in Heidelberg, designs customer-specific solutions together with end users in a new creative way.

University of California, San Francisco

Megan Huchko, MD, MPH is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. She designed and implemented a cervical cancer screening and treatment program for the HIV-infected women receiving care at the clinic, using resource appropriate screening strategies. More recently, she received the 2011 Landon Foundation-AACR INNOVATOR Award for Cancer Prevention Research for work on a protein biomarker for cervical cancer screening among HIV-infected women. Dr. Huchko’s work has focused on strategies to improve the delivery of evidence-proven screening and treatment strategies.

Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin

The Charité is one of the largest university hospitals in Europe with 3800 doctors and scientists treating patients, doing research and providing training. More than half of the German Nobel Prize winners in medicine and physiology come from the Charité, among them Emil von Behring, Robert Koch and Paul Ehrlich. The Charité also has an international reputation for excellence in training. It extends over four campuses with more than 100 clinics and institutes bundled under 17 Charité Centres. With 13,000 employees, the Charité generates about 1.2 billion Euros in sales per year and is one of the largest employers in Berlin. The Laboratory for Gynaecology is part of the Gynaecology Department of Charité and located in the Campus Benjamin Franklin. The ‘Women’s clinic’ treats 10 000 women annually and provides 3000 surgical interventions. The focus of the Laboratory for Gynaecological Tumor Immunology team under the leadership of Dr. A. Kaufmann is translating research into tangible benefits for prevention and treatment of women. In particular, Charité has developed the most precise and efficient methodology to determine the different HPV-Types. In Cooperation with the Robert-Koch-Institute, it is currently implementing a representative study to determine HPV prevalence in Germany.

PD Dr. rer. nat. Andreas Kaufmann, Director

Project: ACCESSING „Adequate cervical cancer capacity building, education and screening by new technologies in Ghana”
Two approved methods i.e. vaginal lavage sampling by “Delphi Screener” and Arbor

Vita “E6 oncoprotein test ” are combined for cervical cancer and pre-cancer screening in the North Tongue District, Volta Region in Ghana. This is an epidemiology study and a feasibility trial with approved methods that are combined for the first time. Initially 250 patients at the colposcopy clinic at CHB will be screened during their visit for validation of the techniques. Then 2000 women will be screened in remote villages with sampling done by Community Health Workers (CHW). The testing for human papillomaviruses that induces cervical cancer is done

in the clinical laboratory of Catholic Hospital Battor in Ghana. Additional testing for type distinction (genotyping) is done in the Gynecology Research Lab of the Charité in Germany. Women tested positive are called for clinical examination by colposcopy and get treatment as necessary.

Radboud University, Njmegen

The departments of gynecology, medical microbiology, and statistics at Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands have for the last 2 decades been involved in improving cervical cancer screening. Indeed large population based studies involving over 80.000 women have been performed investigating the implementation of home based vaginal self-sampling and the use of biomarkers in cervical cancer screening algorithms. These studies in cooperation with the Free University Amsterdam (prof C. Meijer and Prof P. Snijders) have resulted in a proposed new screening algorithm by the Dutch government of Health as of from 2016, using HPV DNA testing as primary screening and introducing self-sampling. The RadboudUMC department of international health has for over 50 years been involved in improving healthcare in underserved communities, by transferring knowledge and providing assistance in improving healthcare at population level. Tanzania has been for a long time one of the primary countries of the Dutch government with whom alliances were built. This has resulted in a long standing relation of the RadboudUMC with health workers and health government in Tanzania.

The RadboudUMC department of international health has for over 50 years been involved in improving healthcare in underserved communities, by transferring knowledge and providing assistance in improving healthcare at population level. Tanzania has been for a long time one of the primary countries of the Dutch government with whom alliances were built cooperations developed. This has resulted in a long standing relation of the RadboudUMC with health workers and health government in Tanzania. The departments of Gynecology, medical microbiology, and statistics have for the last 2 decades been involved in improving cervical cancer screening. Indeed large population based studies involving over 80.000 women have been perfomed investigating the implementation of home based vaginal self sampling and the use of biomarkers in cervical cancer screening algorithms. These studies in cooperation with the Free University Amsterdam (prof C. Meijer and Prof P. Snijders) have resulted in a proposed new screening algorithm by the Dutch government of Health as of from 2016, using HPV as primary screening and introducing self sampling.

Jomo Kenyatta University, Nairobi Kenya

Jomo Kenyatta University, Nairobi Kenya has already gained experience with innovative biomarkers for cervical cancer screening in rural African settings in a recent collaboration with Heidelberg University, Germany. This will allow to directly transferring experiences to Tanzania.

Moi University, Eldoret, Kenya

Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital (MTRH) is the second National Referral Hospital in Kenya. It is located in Eldoret, in the Rift Valley Province of Kenya. It was opened in 1917 as a cottage hospital and it was not until the establishment of Moi University in 1984 and the subsequent establishment of the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University that the hospital elevated from a district hospital to a teaching and referral institution. The hospital has an 800 bed capacity and received patients from western Kenya, parts of Eastern Uganda, and the southern Sudan. The AMPATH Centre is connected to MTRH and the staff work very closely together. Students from Moi University School of Medicine learn at this hospital, and students and residents from the AMPATH Consortium institutions are also often found on the wards learning from and teaching their Kenyan counterparts.

Gondar University, Ethiopia

The University of Gondar, until 2003 known as the Gondar College of Medical Sciences, is the oldest medical school in Ethiopia. Established as the Public Health College in 1954, it is located in Gondar, the former capital of Ethiopia. As of 2010, the university offers about 42 undergraduate and 17 postgraduate programs. but now the University offers 54 undergraduate and 64 postgraduate. These are organized under the College of Medicine and Health Sciences, College of Business and Economics, College of Natural and Computational Sciences, College of Social Sciences and Humanities, and Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and Faculty of Agriculture, and three schools (School of Law, School of Technology and School of Education)

Battor Catholic Hospital, Ghana

Hospital Battor is situated on the western shores of the Volta River about 30 kilometers upstream from Ada and about 100 kilometers from Accra. The immediate catchment’s population is about 37,000 inhabitants. The hospital however has a wider catchment beyond the district with Dangme-East having a population of about 96,000 and Dangme-West about 100,000 according to the Ghana Statistical Service Records. Battor is the largest Sub-District of the North Tongu District in the Volta Region. Over the past years it has witnessed a steady increase of in- and outpatients with 77000 outpatients, more than 8000 admissions, 2,625 major and 1,965 minor surgeries in 2011. Because of the sustained quality of its services, the hospital continues to function as a major referral centre in the catchment area and beyond. The hospital has 255 staff and currently 12 doctors. It is an accredited institution to train resident doctors and house officers. The hospital has a well functioning laboratory with 2 lab technologists and 4 lab technicians. It also has functional links with referral institutions (for example the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital and the Cape Coast Pathology Laboratory). It has a supervisory function for community based health services in the catchment area and routinely provides outreach services to remote communities. Battor Hospital is under the technical ownership of the Accra Metropolitan Archbishop and is a member of the CHAG, which serves as a link between Government/Development Partners and CHAG Member Institutions and provides support to its members through capacity strengthening, coordination of activities, lobbying and advocacy, public relations and translation of government policies. It is estimated that approximately 42% of total health services in the country are provided by CHAG member institutions.

The Gynecological department of the hospital has gained a reputation as a centre for cervical cancer screening and treatment. Through longstanding support from the Dominican sisters and the GRVD nurses are trained for PAP smears and doctors are able to perform colposcopy and cervical cancer treatment including larger interventions (Wertheim operation), which is still rare in Ghana. Dr. Effah has also been appointed as a technical working group member for cervical cancer for the establishment of National Strategy for Cancer Control 2012-2016.

Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center and KC Medical University College, Tanzania

Tanzania has proclaimed/committed to cervical cancer screening as a high priority in their health agenda. The country has adopted the WHO recommended approach of VIA testing and cryotherapy. In practice, the roll-out is currently being implemented on district hospital level integrated into busy reproductive health care services. Recent advances in HIV testing roll out have demonstrated the feasibility of household level health care screening. Our findings will inform policy-makers around implementation of cervical cancer screening in sub-Saharan Africa. Determining the optimal method of implementing a cervical cancer prevention cascade into a low resource setting using patient and provider-driven approaches has the potential to impact screening and treatment rates in settings where women are most at risk for cervical cancer. If our results demonstrate that HPV testing through community health campaigns leads to universal screening in rural areas, and a community developed strategy can increase linkage to treatment, these programs can be replicated to improve health care availability in low and middle income countries and may dramatically reduce the burden of cervical cancer in the most vulnerable women worldwide.

Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center and KC Medical University College are considered ideal participants from Tanzania. They started cervical cancer screening in 2004 and have screened since then 15,000 women by VIA and treated positive women according to the WHO and Tanzanian guidelines in a see and treat approach. Doctors, nurses and Advanced Medical Officers have been trained for screening skills. Although the government has put a lot effort in screening, there is a large population which still needs cervical cancer screening.

Klinikum Wolfsburg, Germany

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Pathologisches Institut, Mannheim

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OUR PARTNERS»When you travel far, you don’t go alone«

Klinikum Wolfsburg, Germany

Pathologisches Institut, Mannheim

SAP, Walldorf, Germany

University of California, San Francisco

Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin

Radboud University, Njmegen

Jomo Kenyatta University, Nairobi Kenya

Moi University, Eldoret, Kenya

Gondar University, Ethiopia

Battor Catholic Hospital, Ghana

Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center and KC Medical University College, Tanzania

Klinikum Wolfsburg, Germany

Pathologisches Institut, Mannheim

FEEL FREE TO JOIN US

WHO WE ARE
Alone we can do so little
together we can do so much

OUR PARTNERS
»When you travel far, you don’t go alone«