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Asia link
Late December 2005 the Female cancer Program started with the Asia Link program in Indonesia. This program is an initiative by the European Commission to promote regional and multilateral networking between higher education institutions in EU Member States and eligible countries in Asia. The program aims to promote the creation of new partnerships and new sustainable links between European and Asian higher education institutions, and to reinforce existing partnerships.
Our Asia Link program aims to structurally enhance the mutual understanding and international cooperation between higher education institutions in Europe and Indonesia in the joint fight against cervical cancer. In the area of cervical cancer this first and foremost requires a structural enhancement of skills in the screening and treatment of women on the side of Gynaeco-oncologists, Gynaecologists and University Hospital Residents in Indonesia. Furthermore medical students that represent the future target groups need to be educated in the multidisciplinary aspects of cervical cancer. To this aim the Leiden University Medical Centre, the University of Leuven, the University of Indonesia (Jakarta), the Padjadjaran University (Bandung) and the Uduyana University (Denpasar) have developed a 24 month intensive Human Resource development program including intensive overseas training courses, joint research, PhD and thesis supervision, a summer school, fellowships and the implementation of a cervix cancer module in the curriculum. These activities that are more focused on the academic part of the Female Cancer Program are complementary to the grassroots level "See and Treat" project.
Three geographic regions in Indonesia will be covered: Jakarta, Bandung and Denpasar.
The proposed cooperation between the European and Indonesian Universities is relevant to the following priorities:
Economic development: 250,000 women in developing countries and around 38,000 women in Indonesia each year die unnecessarily from cervical cancer. These women are mostly hit in their reproductive phase, in which they have a central and indispensable role in the local economy. Women in Indonesia, where labour is still the most important production factor, work on the land, or in the local administration and are responsible for raising the children in the family. Around 38,000 women each year can be saved and can keep contributing to the economic development if they can receive the proper attention and treatment. This project directly contributes to achieving this aim by enhancing the quality of adequate health care to these women. Furthermore the exchange of knowledge on the epidemiological, immunological and pathological aspects of HPV and cervical cancer between Indonesia and Europe will greatly enhance the progress towards worldwide eradication of cervical cancer, leveraging these positive economic effects to other resource-poor regions in Asia faced with similar problems, such as Malaysia, Bangladesh and Bhutan.
Social and Cultural development: This project will contribute to the social and cultural development of women in Indonesia, who are still confronted with the social and cultural taboos surrounding sexually transmitted diseases such as cervical cancer. The activities proposed in the project will lead to a better understanding and social acceptance by women and their social community of the ways to prevent cervical cancer (safe sex and screening and early treatment) as well as social acceptance by the local communities (men in particular) of women treated for cervical cancer. Part of the training and curricula developed will specifically focus on the social and psychosocial aspects of cervical cancer in pursuit of lowering these socially and culturally determined barriers.
Ensuring equal opportunities and participation of different gender: The cooperation between the Universities in the joint pursuit of eradication of cervical cancer in Indonesia will contribute to equal opportunities for men and women in Indonesia. Furthermore, priority will be given to female students and gynaecologists in the different actions proposed, in order to underline the importance of and to enhance the social acceptance of screening and treating women for cervical cancer.
The expected impact on the participants of the Asia Link Program is substantial. After participating in this project they will have acquired new knowledge on epidemiology, aetiology, biological behaviour, prevention, treatment and multidisciplinary aspects of cervical cancer. They will acquire new skills in screening techniques (VIA and pap-smear) and complex surgical treatment techniques for cervical cancer. With this new skills and knowledge, there are far better equipped and qualified to perform adequate care in screening and treating cervical cancer. They will become subject matter experts for their region in this topic, being responsible for teaching the gynaecologists and university hospital residents respectively in their universities, boosting their expertise.
The impact on the direct target groups will indirectly have a great impact on the quality of life of women diagnosed with cervical cancer, especially in the three regions covered in Indonesia as they will have access to better and more adequate care. Moreover, the new screening techniques acquired by the direct target groups will enable the set-up of better locally owned screening programs, contributing to the necessary prevention of cervical cancer in Indonesia. Finally, the increased and intensified EU-Asia scientific collaboration made possible by this program will in the end benefit the women in Indonesia as they are the ultimate target group of the international research initiatives in the area of cervical cancer.