Mary Kabarungi, 30, a mother of one and resident of Kanombe in Kigali, says she will never go for a pap smear, a procedure to test for cervical cancer, citing infringement on her privacy.

"The test is carried out in [a woman’s] private parts. And the fact that most gynaecologists in the country are men, I feel like it’s a trespass on a person’s privacy. I have actually heard some people say that the procedure is painful,” she remarks.

Dr Alphonse Butoyi, a Gynaecologist at Rwanda Military Hospital says he sees three to four women per week coming for consultation on the Pap smear test.

"But only one woman out of the four I receive is willing to take a pap smear,” he says.Kabarungi is one of those shying away from the procedure yet statistics show high prevalence of cervical cancer.

Statistics from the Ministry of Health show that 2.72 million women are at risk of developing the disease which results from a genital infection caused by the Papilloma (HPV) virus.

Between 2011 and August this year, 986 women were diagnosed with the cancer and 678 of them (almost 70 percent) died.

According to the Ministry of Health, 68.5 percent of cancer cases are confirmed microscopically, and cancer related mortality is estimated at around 9.6% .

Breast and cervical cancers are the most persistent among Rwandan women, affecting 32 percent of all diagnosed with cancer.

According to the World Health Organisation, Rwanda is ranked among the countries with the highest cervical cancer incidence, estimated at 49.4 per 100,000 women.

Recent statistics from the World Health Organisation (WHO) show that cervical cancer is the second most common cancer in women, with an estimated 530 000 new cases in 2012 world-wide.

It adds that approximately 270,000 women died from cervical cancer; more than 85 percent of the deaths occurring in low and middle-income countries in the same year.

Jean-Paul Balinda, the Cancer Disease Senior Officer at Rwanda Biomedical Centre, told Sunday Times that cervical cancer was preventable and could be treated in time. 

"It is preventable and has a 95 per cent chance of being cured,” he noted.

National vaccination effort

Between 2011 and August this year, half a million women, of which 97 percent are school-going girls, had since been administered with ‘Cervarix’ vaccine, an immunization against HPV. More than 150,000 more are expected to be vaccinated by the end of this year.

At least 2.72 million more school-going girls between the age of 11 and 15 are expected to be vaccinated by 2015, the government says. Its plan is to eradicate the disease by 2020.

The country was the first on the continent to roll out a free vaccination and screening.