McCormick Commends Sylvester Cancer Center, Promotes Cervical Cancer Elimination

While October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, which we honored by speaking with Dr. Miguel Fernandez, cervical cancer remains an equally deadly affliction for women worldwide. Recently, Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-FL-20) spoke on the House floor to promote the Cervical Cancer Elimination Day of Action.

Additionally, Rep. Cherfilus-McCormick describes the efforts conducted by the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center to research and combat the deadly disease.

"Across the globe, one woman dies every two minutes from cervical cancer, even though the disease is preventable, detectable, and curable. The Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center is working to decrease cancer disparities across South Florida and beyond," states Rep. Cherfilus-McCormick.

McCormick adds that "two years ago, the World Health Organization launched a global strategy to accelerate the elimination of cervical cancer by 2030." From here, she describes how "last year, the WHO announced a partnership with Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, part of the University of Miami's Health Center, designating the first WHO collaborating center for cervical cancer elimination."

She then describes a rather grim statistic: "across the globe, one woman dies every two minutes from cervical cancer, even though the disease is preventable, treatable, detectable, and curable. Here at home, according to the CDC, 13,000 new cases of cervical cancer are diagnosed, and 4,000 women die of this preventable and treatable cancer every year."

McCormick describes that there is a racial disparity in cervical cancer cases, as it "disproportionately affects Hispanic and Black women." She says that this is due to "social determinants such as health, income, lack of access to the internet, race, geographic location, and limited access to transportation often impact women's ability to to obtain needed prevention, screening, and treatment for cervical cancer."

As such, this is why she is speaking about the Elimination Day of Action and the Sylvester Center's work in "developing new, cost-effective tests for HPV, improving treatment options to prolong cervix survivors, and increasing screening through its mobile outreach campaign."

It is worth noting that McCormick's colleague Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL-23) is herself a cancer survivor, as is Florida First Lady Casey DeSantis.