A test women can take themselves, read by AI: 50,000 women screened across nine countries

Cervical cancer can usually be stopped when it is caught early, yet in many poorer countries fewer than 15 in 100 women ever get screened. A study led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) tried a simpler route with more than 50,000 women aged 25 to 49 across nine countries: Brazil, Cambodia, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Eswatini, Honduras, Malawi, Nigeria and Tanzania. Each woman collected her own sample for a test for HPV, the virus behind most cervical cancer. Those who tested positive had a picture of the cervix taken with a small portable camera, and an AI program helped judge whose results looked most worrying. The approach found more than 500 women with severe changes that come just before cancer — in time for treatment — and it can be done in a single visit, which matters where a second trip to a clinic is hard. The study appears in The Lancet Obstetrics, Gynaecology & Women's Health.

SDG 3 · Good health and well-being — Mechanism: tech innovation