Groesbeck P, Mwanahamuntu M, Sahasrabuddhe V, et al. HIV Ther 2010;4:713–722OpenUrlCrossRef

Groesbeck and his team report on the outcomes of the new public sector cervical cancer screening programme, which was launched in Zambia in 2006. The programme is the product of a partnership between the Zambian Ministry of Health, the National Centre for Infectious Disease Research, Lusaka University Teaching Hospital, Zambia and the University of Alabama, USA.

The cervical screening programme is open to all women but this article described the outcomes in HIV-positive women from the ‘screen and treat’ service. This is an area of current interest, as not only is cervical cancer a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in low-income countries, it is also known that women worldwide who are HIV-positive have the highest risk of being affected by both cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) and invasive cervical cancer (ICC).1 HIV prevalence continues to grow, with over 40 million people affected worldwide. If programmes for screening and treating can be shown to be effective, they could make significant improvements in the lives of thousands of women.

The issue the article aimed to address …