More than 88 health professionals from 45 institutions in the country have started training in cervical cancer prevention.

Organised by King Faisal Hospital, Kigali, the training, conducted by Spanish oncologists, opened on Monday and will run through to December. It is administered online by specialists from the Catalan Institute of Oncology (ICO), a specialised cancer institution based in Catalunya.

The local professionals being trained under the programme include doctors, medical specialists, public health professionals, nurses, health planners, health programme managers, researchers and educators.

They will, among others, be tipped on the impact of the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) infection on other cancers and benign disease, HPV vaccines currently available and their effectiveness and safety, factors to be considered in the introduction of HPV vaccination, and the effective methods of primary prevention.

Other areas include the different cervical cancer screening methods, and the impact of HPV infection in special populations, for example in pregnant women, immunosuppressed people, among others.

In an interview with The New Times yesterday, Andrea Malet, the corporate social responsibility manager at Oshen Health Care, said the training is meant to keep health professionals up-to-date with the advances in their profession.

"The objective of this course is to keep updated medical professionals involved in preventing and treating cervical cancer in the latest procedures,” she said.

A specific virtual classroom in cervical cancer prevention, run online by the Spanish oncologists, has been created for professionals involved in this area of healthcare where they will have free access to the e-Learning platform.

This is the second edition of the training after one in 2016 that was dedicated to the College of Medicine and Health Sciences of the University of Rwanda.

It lasted two months.

According to the final evaluation of the trainees in the first training, 96 per cent said the content of the course is relevant to their work and practice techniques, and all of them recommended the course to other professionals.

Up to 92 per cent of the participants rated the course as good or excellent.

Through its e-Learning programme, "e-Oncologia,” the Catalan Institute of Oncology (ICO) offers a consolidated teaching methodology of virtual training grouped into 5 programmes, 80 courses that have been translated into seven languages, with more 17,000 participants in all continents.

E-Oncology is the ICO portal specialising in ongoing training for every area of oncology, and is the first online teaching project devoted solely to provide training in this area of healthcare.

Its main goal is to create virtual spaces where specialists in training, practicing doctors and non-specialist professionals can learn about cancer.

According to the ICO Information Centre of HPV, Rwanda has an estimated 3.5 million women who are at risk of developing cervical cancer – the most common type of cancer in women between the ages 15 and 44.

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