March 2010 – Dr Lisa Wong

The 15th Colposcopy course was held on 21st March 2010 at the Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel. We thank Dr Joseph Ng from the National University Hospital for taking up the chairmanship and an excellent job in organising the course. The emphasis this year was on histopathology and we had the privilege of having Professor Peter Russell from the Royal Prince Albert Hospital, Sydney was our keynote speaker.

The 16th Annual Oration and dinner was held at the Privé, Marina at Keppel Bay on 20th March 2010. Professor Peter Russell gave a stimulating talk entitled “Defining the limits of histopathology: Management Surgeon’s Expectations”

The Colposcopy Registration Committee (CRC) was set up in 2004 and the 3rd renewal exercise was done in December 2010 and 116 colposcopists were renewed. The colposcopy test was held on 20th March 2010 at the national University Hospital and all 6 trainees passed the test. The top scorer was Dr Cindy Pang and a book voucher was presented to her at the colposcopy course.

The CRC was working with the Specialist Training Committee (STC) with the aims to incorporate the SCCPS structured training programme into the O&G National Training Programme. The workflow was such that there would be a close collaboration between STC, SCCPS and the respective hospital institutions. STC would act in a supervisory role and ensure that trainees are registered for the structured training programme for colposcopy. SCCPS would provide the requirements of the syllabus, logbook requirements, examination and registration of trainees. The individual institutions provides for the supervision, teaching, training and clinical materials to the candidates.

The Society organised CME programme with a focus on vulval lesions. Dr Chew Sung Hock helped chair the dinner symposium entitled “HPV Something Old, Something New, Something Red, Something Blue” on 25th January 2011. Dr Mamuduri Rama Padmavathi, Dr Fong Kah Leng and Dr Ivy Chew formed the panel of speakers. The symposium was supported by MSD.

The society has been actively involved in the Power over Cervical Cancer campaign (POCC). We strongly believe that all women should be empowered with knowledge regarding cervical cancer screening and vaccination. The POCC campaign advocates raising awareness of cervical cancer screening and prevention through public outreach programmes. The POCC website was redesigned to make it more appealing, interactive and user friendly the younger target audience. There were 21, 724 unique visitors since the launch in May 2010. Channels such as blogs, media and ambassadors were engaged to create awareness of cervical cancer.

There were four key events held in 2010, reaching out to 3000 people:

• The POCC Bloggers Engagement workshop was held on 19th may 2010 at the Beauty Emporium at Dempsey Road. We invited 15 of the top active bloggers in Singapore to attend the event. During the interactive workshop, 8 bloggers decided to spread interest regarding cervical cancer in through their blogs and volunteered to be POCC ambassadors.
• The POCC Media Launch was held on 27th May 2010 at the Royal Plaza at Scotts. The guest of honour was the Member of Parliament, Madam Halimah Yacob, she played a vital key role in getting Parliament to agree on the use of Medisave for the HPV vaccine and she was instrumental in promoting the vaccine to be part of the national immunisation programme. The media event included the personal testimony of a mother and daughter’s experience with cervical cancer and saw a good show of attendance by representatives from the broadcast media form all the local daily newspapers and health and lifestyle magazines.
• The POCC Pink Bazaar was held on the 24th July 2010 at Zouk. The bazaar consisted of 35 stalls where exclusive items contributed by bloggers, ambassador and celebrities were put for sale to help raise awareness. The proceeds from the sales were donated to the cervical cancer prevention fund.
• The POCC Pink Party was also held on 24th July at Zouk. The aim was to reach the younger women to increase publicity regarding cervical cancer. Doctors from the society, bloggers and other ambassadors shared their thoughts at the party and emphasized the key messages regarding screening and prevention. The event was attended by 1316 people and resulted in an increase in the POCC database and resulted in many pledges online to help spread the message.

We hope that these efforts will help to create awareness for women to take an active step forward towards regular Pap smear screening and vaccination to help reduce the incidence of cervical cancer.