Robyn and her team are helping advance the health of women and children in Northern Uganda. In partnership with Gulu University, they have surveyed women on reproductive health and domestic violence, published results, and together with Gulu and the Ugandan Women’s Health Initiative, they established new cancer screening services at local health centres.
Professor Robyn Richmond and her team are helping advance the health of women and children in Northern Uganda. In partnership with Gulu University, they have surveyed women on reproductive health and domestic violence, published results, and together with Gulu and the Ugandan Women’s Health Initiative, they established new cancer screening services at local health centres. More recently, Robyn and her team have been exploring the benefits, challenges and possibilities of online teaching with their Gulu University counterparts.
More than 1500 women from northern Uganda have been screened for cervical and breast cancer as part of a community health program that was set up in part by UNSW.
Launched in 2016, the Transforming Community Health Program was the product of a tripartite partnership between UNSW, Gulu University and the Ugandan Health Ministry which aimed to improve women’s and children’s health, reduce non-communicable diseases and mental illness, and introduce online learning in the Gulu University Master of Public Health program.
Prior to the start of the program, Ugandan women had some of the poorest prospects in the world when it came to surviving cervical cancer: 13 per cent were expected to survive five years after diagnosis while in Australia that figure is 72 per cent. Cervical cancer is also the most common form of cancer among Ugandan women, while in Australia it is expected to be eradicated by 2035. Ugandan women’s five-year survival rates for breast cancer are behind the developed world, with 52 per cent likely to survive, compared with a 90 per cent chance of surviving in Australia.
Cancer clinics for women are being launched in health centres across northern Uganda. Professor Robyn Richmond says following the launch of the cancer screening program in 2017, momentum is building for the clinics to become permanently available to women in northern Uganda.
“By the time the five-year plan for the Transforming Community Health Program finishes, we should have really well-trained nurses and midwives in cervical cancer screening in all the major health centres across northern Uganda, as well as trained health educators, researchers and clinicians,” says Professor Richmond.