THE CURE NOT TAKEN

In the fight against cervical cancer, an easily available and affordable vaccine is the ultimate weapon. Why then are tens of thousands of Indian women still dying of this disease?

- Sonali Acharjee

IT STARTED IN EARLY 2022, with a few spots of blood between menstrual cycles. Aditi Sharma (name changed), 38, then a PhD student in Delhi, didn’t tell anyone; she had just broken up with her partner and begun seeing someone else. The bleeding stopped in a few hours, but just a day later, she experienced intense pain during intercourse. “I thought it would pass,” says Sharma.

The spotting and pelvic pain remained intermittent and Sharma kept dealing with them with over-the-counter painkillers. It was only when she started having trouble breathing that she knew something was terribly wrong. “My friends had to rush me to the ICU,” she says. Within a few hours of reaching the hospital, Sharma’s life took a turn that she continues to grapple with even today. She was diagnosed with advanced stage of an aggressive form of cervical cancer, which had spread to her lungs. Sharma has been under treatment for nearly two years now. “I have had two long surgeries, and I cannot have children now as my uterus had to be removed,” she says.

She has also been through several sessions of chemotherapy and radiation, and may have to undergo treatment for the rest of her life to prevent a relapse. Things would have been different if only she had reached out for medical attention on time. “But I was too ashamed to talk of vaginal bleeding,” says Sharma. “I thought my parents would come to know I had sex.”

Sharma is still among the luckier ones. Only one in two—or 51 per cent—of women diagnosed of the disease in India survive, according to a study published in