Cervical cancer | No takers for the vaccine

Thanks to social stigma and lack of awareness, thousands of women continue to die of cervical cancer in India, even though it is the only type that's almost entirely preventable by a vaccine

(Illustrations by Siddhant Jumde)

It started in early 2022, with a few spots of blood between menstrual cycles. Aditi Sharma (name changed), 38, then a Ph.D. student in Delhi, didn’t tell anyone; she had just broken up with her partner and begun seeing someone else. The bleeding stopped in a few hours, but just a day later, she experienced intense pain during sexual intercourse. “I thought it would pass,” says Sharma. The spotting and the pelvic pain remained intermittent and Sharma kept dealing with them with over-the-counter painkillers. It was only when she started having trouble breathing that she knew something was terribly wrong. “My friends had to rush me to the ICU,” she says. Within a few hours of reaching the hospital, Sharma’s life took a turn that she continues to grapple with even today. She was diagnosed with advanced stage cervical cancer, and a particularly aggressive version of it, which had spread to her lungs. Sharma has been under treatment for nearly two years now. “I have had two long surgeries, and I cannot have children now as my uterus had to be removed,” she says. She has also been through several sessions of chemotherapy and radiation, and may have to undergo treatment for the rest of her life to prevent relapse. Things would have been different if only she had reached out for medical attention on time. “But I was too ashamed to talk of vaginal bleeding,” says Sharma. “I thought my parents would come to know I had sex.”