"Women are still lacking knowledge about the real causes of cervical cancer."Yogyakarta (ANTARA News) - About 270 thousand women in Indonesia died of cervical cancer annually, deputy dean of the medical faculty of the Indonesian Islamic University of Yogyakarta, Titik Kuntari, said.
"According to data, every year about 500,000 women in Indonesia had been diagnosed with cervical cancer, and 270,000 of them eventually died," she said here on Thursday.
She said that cervical cancer in Indonesia was number one killer among so many types of cancer. Cervical cancer was the second most prevalent cancer suffered by women aged between 20 to 55 years old, she said.
Titik said that based on surveys on 5,423 women in nine Asian countries, only two percent of them who knew that they had cervical cancer after they were infected with the human papiloma virus (HPV).
"So, women are still lacking knowledge about the real causes of cervical cancer," she said.
Their lack of knowledge of cervical cancer worsened the condition of the sufferers and their continued to increase every year, she said.
Indeed, she said, there was an easy way to avoid this type of cancer, namely vaccination. Early detection and vaccination could reduce the number of cervical cancerous women in Indonesia, she added.
(Uu.A014/HAJM/P003)
Editor: Priyambodo RH
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