- With the right systems and processes you can achieve
very good control of cervical cancer.
Australia now has a very low incidence and mortality,
but Victoria is approaching what will be possibly
elimination targets.
So I think there are opportunities for partnership
between countries like Australia and countries
that are trying to establish screening for the first time
and bilateral learning, I suppose.
- So ROSE is an acronym for Removing Obstacles
to Cervical Screening.
How it came about was through my meeting with Marion
at a cervical cancer meeting.
I still remember Marion saying that
we've sorted out Australia.
Now it's time for us to move to a more challenging area.
If we believe it we can make a change.
- Project ROSE is a partnership essentially
between us, a nonprofit to complement and to support
government initiatives to ensure that self-testing
and HPV testing is rolled out as quickly as possible
for Malaysians, whether in urban or rural settings.
- Optimal cervical cancer control requires
every young girl who's age eligible to be vaccinated
against the human papillomavirus and every woman,
age 30 to 49 globally to have at least one HPV test.
And once that is in place,
the next thing to think about is making sure
that those women in whom HPV is detected
are adequately followed up and treated
because we won't prevent cancer just by screening,
screening as a pathway that has to be followed through.
- I would strongly suggest girls and women,
you need to go for the normal, regular Pap smear test
because this can be prevented.
- Finding out that you have cancer at an early stage
is always the best gift you can give yourself.
I'm terribly lucky to have found out much earlier.
- Successful research collaboration can occur
when people get on together and they have similar goals.
Australia has gone through the transition from pap smears
to HPV testing.
They've had a long history of using screening registries.
Those are all areas where we are weakened.
And in terms of the HPV technology,
lots of new methods are coming up
and that's where the collaboration comes in,
knowledge sharing, they're just a call away
and we can discuss problems, ideas and it gets sorted out.
- Talking about genitalia in this country is a no, no.
In any sense, you know, anything to do with sex education
and sexual interactions,
it's not something that you can openly talk about.
It's something that you talk about behind closed doors.
- You wanna make sure that it's not considered taboo.
You know, people will not look down
or feel that it's not in line with their religious beliefs,
but it is really in accordance of what's right
and what must be done.
- The Pap smear has been around for decades,
but women in Malaysia are loathe to have it.
So we need to find a different way of doing it
and having this self testing that can be done very quickly
without necessarily going to a doctor's clinic
is going to revolutionise things.
- There are a group of women who will never allow
a health care professional to perform an invasive test
such as this occasionally even without permission
from their husbands, that's rare but it happens.
And so these women, I think they would accept
self sampling much more.
- I'm gonna just take the example of my wife, daughters,
they are more than comfortable to do the self sampling
themselves and do it within the comfort and privacy
of their home.
I believe that this is the way forward.
- The other innovation of ROSE is the link
to a data management system where you will receive
your results, you're told where to go,
where to get care if you need it,
and a reminder later on, if you need to have a repeat test.
So it's all built in to ensure linkage to care
and follow up.
- Can you imagine this self test kit?
You have no idea how much women hate Pap smears.
And to address that for me,
it's brilliant because usually no one hears our complaints.
- I think the partnership works both ways.
What they learn from us in terms of the
social cultural background, our infrastructural situation,
if our colleagues can learn that they can also help
in other countries as well.
- We have a lot of technical expertise,
countries know what works in their setting
and in partnership, I think we can reach
this elimination target.
- It so happened I did my postgraduate research degree
on the subject of human papillomavirus immunology.
I never thought in my lifetime
that we would be able to announce an effort,
a global effort where we can eliminate a cancer
and so happened I'm here.
- The psychological impact of conquering the big C
is only the start.
You know, I believe so,
but if we can start getting some degree of excitement
and movement, then you know, nothing is off limits.