“Using Innovation To Improve Women’s Health”, that’s the theme for the 2015 annual PNG Medical Symposium. This is an annual scientific conference activity run by the PNG Medical Society of PNG.

I am not attending this year’s meeting. But focusing myself on preparing for our own specialty meeting – Pathology Specialist Meeting.

Apart from the poor maternal mortality indicators that are well researched and published, two diseases that in my opinion have been ignored by the medical fraternity in PNG is Breast Cancer and Cervical Cancer.

There is much talk and publicity on awareness and education – Prevention in nature, but there is no work at all in EARLY DETECTION SERVICES!

It is now well established that EARLY DETECTION is a KEY ACTIVITY in reducing deaths from breast cancer and cervical cancer. There is no national policy or program or public service targeting these 2 diseases aiming at starting and rolling out early detection services.

Vaccine for cervical cancer is available and there is talk of rolling it out in PNG. But my question is how can we roll this out effectively when we can’t cover over 80% of the routine childhood immunization requirements in PNG?

Talking about radical surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy is too late!!

We need to start talking EARLY DETECTION!

I am hoping some innovative scientific papers are presented covering early detection.