Cervical Cancer: The Chilean Perspective

Reports published by WHO state that the number of cancer cases is increasing all over the world. There are 10 million new cases per year and this number is expected to rise up to 15 million cases by 20201. According to WHO’s estimates for 2005, there was a total of 58 million deaths from chronic diseases and about 7.6 million of them were caused by cancer2. Worldwide, the three main causes of death due to cancer among women, in descending order, are: breast cancer, lung cancer and cervical cancer with an age-standardized rate between 12.5 and 7.9 per 100000 women3. However in developing countries cervical cancer is the second cause of cancer death