Suzy Lockwood, a Texas Christian University associate professor in the Harris College of Nursing & Health Sciences, gave a presentation Jan. 13 focusing on cervical cancer, calling attention to the month of January, which is designated by the National Cervical Cancer Coalition as Cervical Health Awareness Month.

Lockwood, who is also the director of the Center for Oncology Education and Research at TCU, emphasized the importance of screening for cervical cancer through regular Pap tests as well as preventing the cancer through healthy lifestyle choices and vaccination against human papilloma virus where applicable.

The cervix’s role is primarily to hold the uterus closed during pregnancy, Lockwood said, and today it’s often removed during hysterectomies. However, cervical cancer accounts for more than 3,500 deaths annually in the United States and is the most common cause of cancer death for women in parts of the world where there are no Pap tests widely available to screen for it, Lockwood said.

About 9,500 women will be diagnosed with cervical cancer each year in the United States, and Pap tests are important detection tools when done regularly. Pap tests check for abnormal cervical cell changes caused by HPV, which is the sexually transmitted virus that is the central cause of cervical cancer. Most women with HPV never have symptoms, and abnormal cells due to HPV may take several years to appear, Lockwood said. Cervical cancer itself may not show symptoms, Lockwood said, and so continuous screening is important as well as prevention through vaccines like Gardasil, which protects women against four strains of the virus that can cause cervical cancer and genital warts, a symptom of the virus.

There is evidence that HPV vaccines may work in men, which has not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration yet, and Lockwood said she has high hopes that some day men and women will be vaccinated. Because there are more than 100 strains of HPV and Gardasil only protects against four, a man today could still give a woman cancer-causing HPV even if she’s vaccinated, Lockwood said.

“If guys don’t get the vaccine, then vaccinating every woman in the world is not going to be effective,” she said.

In addition to vaccination (if applicable, since Gardasil is recommended for women under the age of 26), healthy lifestyle choices help lower the risk of cervical cancer, Lockwood said. For information about cervical cancer and about risks for the disease, visit the National Cervical Cancer Coalition at www.nccc-online.org.

Health screenings offered

The Muslim Community Center for Human Services is hosting an open house and health screening day in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday and President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration Jan. 19 from 1-4 p.m. The event will be at the Al Shifa Clinic at 7600 Glenview Drive in Richland Hills and will offer blood pressure checks, blood sugar screening, free mammography registration and community resource information.

JPS dedicates new centers

The JPS Health Network and Arlington ISD will dedicate two new JPS School-Based Health Centers. The JPS School-Based Health Center – Workman, at 701 E. Arbrook Blvd. in Arlington, was dedicated Jan. 8, and the JPS School-Based Health Center – Nichols, at 1850 Brown Blvd. in Arlington, was dedicated Jan. 14.

Trained Filipino nurses are crying foul over the Nursing Council's tightening of rules governing registering overseas-trained nurses.

They say the new requirements are prejudicial and unfair and are keeping them at unskilled jobs on the minimum wage when hospitals are facing an acute shortage of nurses.

In new requirements effective from Thursday, all overseas-qualified nurses - including those from Britain and other English-speaking countries - will face a tough English language assessment.

It will require they score 7.0 in each band of the IELTS (International English language testing system) test, higher than the current university entry requirement of 6.0.

But the biggest stumbling block for many Filipino nurses is a recent ruling by the council that nursing degree courses of less than four years will no longer be deemed eligible.

For most of the Philippines-trained nurses, nursing was their second course, and the length of time they took to complete it was reduced because they had exemption for certain subjects taken for a previous degree.

Agnes Granada, co-ordinator for Migrant Action Trust, said it was common for Filipino workers to do a degree in nursing as a second course because they saw the global nursing shortage as their ticket out of the Philippines.

Ms Granada said she knew of trained nurses who had been medical doctors back in the Philippines who could not be registered here.

Ruby Lat, a former dentist-turned-nurse, said the council requirements were totally ridiculous and unfair.

"I feel it is just the council's way of protecting nursing jobs for the locals," said Mrs Lat, who could find work only as a healthcare assistant at Auckland's North Shore Hospital on a pay of $16 an hour instead of $25 an hour as a registered nurse. Another, who wanted to be known only as Reginald, believed the requirement was to protect nursing jobs for the locals.

"How many of the local nurses would even be able to get 7.0 in IELTS anyway. It is just not a level playing field."

Rodney Faulkner, director of A1 Care 24-7, which recruits nurses overseas for local hospitals and district health boards, says the new registration is stupid and will just add to New Zealand's loss.

Mr Faulkner said "there seems to be a huge miscarriage of justice" when a trained nurse he recruited, who also held a doctor's degree in of medicine and topped his university in the Philippines, was not considered good enough for this country.

Hospitals are facing nursing shortages. In November, Auckland City Hospital blamed nurse shortages for a big rise in the number of people wait-listed for heart surgery.

The Nursing Council could not be contacted for comment.