Two Moldovan laboratories benefit from advanced equipment bought with support of UN Population Fund

Chisinau, 6 June /MOLDPRES/ - Two laboratories of the Republican Clinical Hospital and the Mother and Child Institute have been endowed with advanced equipment for the providing of cervical screening services. The equipment worth 140,000 dollars was purchased by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), with money provided by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.    

Attending the inauguration event was Health, Labour and Social Protection Minister Silvia Radu. “The Papanicolau Test is the only way of early diagnosing the changes of the cervix, contributing to the prevention of the cervical cancer. The ministry, with the support of development partners, endowed the laboratories with modern equipment, which will allow us to cover all needed cytological and histo-pathological analyses from Moldova and to thus reduce the number of deaths caused by this disease, by prevention and treatment in time,” the official said.      

At the same event, a UNFPA representative, Rita Columbia, said that, in the last five years, more than 1,500 women of Moldova, most of reproductive age, had died of this disease. “The cervical cancer can be easy prevented and we made a very important step to this end today. The laboratory equipment will be used both for providing qualitative medical services, at international standards, in the process of cervical screening and for training specialists in the field. We urge women to ask for these services, so as to cease the cervical cancer together,” Columbia noted.    

According to the Health, Labour and Social Protection Ministry, cytological and histo-pathological analyses are daily carried out in renovated laboratories, which allow the early diagnosis of pre-cancerous lesions of the cervix and so the cervical cancer in women will be prevented.    

Statistics data shows that one woman dies of cervical cancer in Moldova every three days.