THIS CANCER IS PREVENTABLE WHY IS IT STILL KILLING THOUSANDS OF WOMEN A YEAR?

4,300 WOMEN, That's how many deaths the U.S. will see this year from a form of cancer that is entirely avoidable. And in total, this single year, around 14,000 women will be diagnosed with it.

- BETH HOWARD

The disease is cervical cancer, and unlike with most types of cancer, there are effective screening tests to prevent it: Pap tests, to detect abnormal cervical cells, and tests for the high-risk types of human papillomavirus (HPV), the virus that causes most cases. There's also the ability to remove precancerous tissue, as well as a vaccine that offers nearly 100% protection against the HPV infections that cause cervical cancer, which has been available for the past 17 years.

"This is the one cancer we can prevent," says Denise Howard, M.D., chief of obstetrics and gynecology at New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital in New York City. "We have all these tools, but our numbers have stayed the same when they should be dropping. At this point, cervical cancer should be a 'never' event."

In fact, rates of cervical cancer have stubbornly stagnated in the U.S. after tumbling steadily from the 1970s until about 11 years ago. In 2012, overall rates started to plateau, says research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, except for women ages 30 to 34, for whom rates started to shift upward that year and have ticked up by 3% every year since. And no one really knows why.

One thing is clear in many cases of the disease: "Women are getting cervical cancer because they are falling through the cracks in our health care system," Dr. Howard says. Kate Weissman, 38, is one example. When she got the call telling her she had cervical cancer eight years ago, "I collapsed on the floor, sobbing," she says. "I remember thinking, I'm not ready to die."