Family Health Ministries’ mission is to support Haitian communities in their efforts to build and sustain healthy families.
Family Health Ministries’ mission is to support Haitian communities in their efforts to build and sustain healthy families. One of our programs provides HPV screening to Haitian women. The HPV virus causes cervical cancer. A Haitian woman is six times more likely to die from cervical cancer than her American sister.
In 2007, FHM, in partnership with #QIAGEN, brought HPV technology to Haiti. Since then, we have screened over 12,000 women for the HPV. However, until 2012 we were unable to process the samples in Haiti, but instead had to ship them to the QUIAGEN lab in Gaithersburg, MD. Now, with a grant from the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, in partnership with #FOSREF, Haitian healthcare leaders have achieved another milestone in improving healthcare for Haitian women by opening an HPV lab in Port-au-Prince.
Cynthia Jones, QUIAGEN Sr. Applications Specialist, arrived in Haiti in June 2013 to train the FOSREF staff in using QIAGEN’s HC2 assay – the most advanced HPV screening technology available. We are pleased to have been able to support the Haitian healthcare system and now, independent of outside assistance, Haitian leadership can move forward in scaling what was once a small program into a national cervical cancer screening program.