About Visualize

Every year, 300,000 women die from cervical cancer, and ninety percent of these cases occur in low and middle income countries. Screening for cervical cancer significantly reduces this mortality rate, given that most cervical cancer and pre-cancer cases caught early are treatable. Unfortunately, many low and middle income settings lack the infrastructure for traditional screening.  Visual inspection of the cervix with acetic acid (VIA) is a low-cost and effective method to screen for cervical cancer but is not currently used widely, due to a lack of training and awareness of the method. VIA is currently the most accessible “see-and-treat” approach to screening and has been shown to be viable in low and middle income settings. 

The aim of our project is to design and implement training for VIA cervical cancer screening. A number of people and organizations have attempted to address the issue of cervical cancer detection and early treatment before, but none through the lens of trainer-based education. Most programs have focused primarily on the role of VIA in cervical cancer screening in low-resource countries, and in general, their results have been very positive. However, none of these programs have focused specifically on developing an effective training method and its distribution, and this is the gap we are working to fill.

Visualize was initiated in Ghana in 2013, where cervical cancer is the number one cause of cancerous death in women yet less than five percent of women have been screened for cervical cancer. We have consulted with over 100 stakeholders in medicine, public health, and engineering through the design iterations. See our Collaborators page to learn more about who we work with.