NICRAT begins free cervical cancer screening for 200 women in Ebonyi
- The National Institute for Cancer Research and Treatment has started free cervical cancer screening in Abakaliki, targeting 200 women.
- It is the second phase of a programme that began with breast cancer screening in December 2025.
- Ebonyi's health commissioner wants the target raised from 200 to 2,000 women.
Two hundred women in Ebonyi State can now get free cervical cancer screening, as the National Institute for Cancer Research and Treatment (NICRAT) began a campaign in Abakaliki. The exercise is the second phase of a programme that puts cancer prevention services inside family planning at primary healthcare centres.
NICRAT is running it with the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare and the National Task Force on Cervical Cancer Elimination. The same work is going on in six states, one in each of Nigeria's six geopolitical zones.
Cervical cancer is one of the cancers that kills Nigerian women, yet it can be prevented and treated when found early. That is the message health officials took to the screening site.
Moses Ekuma, the Ebonyi State Commissioner for Health, said the disease is preventable and treatable, and urged women to use the free screening to cut cancer deaths. He said the state government is ready to back an expansion of the target from 200 to 2,000 women, and that the programme fits Governor Francis Nwifuru's People's Charter of Needs agenda, which puts healthcare and the prevention of avoidable deaths first.
Ekuma said Ebonyi has held screening for cervical, breast and prostate cancers before. He directed health workers to educate women about screening whenever they visit primary healthcare facilities.
How the testing works
Ifeyinwa Okeke, NICRAT's state team leader for the National Initiative for Cancer Early Detection, Screening and Coordinated Access to Network Care (NISCAN), said health workers from three primary healthcare centres have been trained to carry out HPV DNA testing. The World Health Organisation recommends this method for cervical cancer screening.
Okeke said the screening uses a TrueNAT machine provided by NICRAT. Women are registered and given unique identification numbers before their samples are taken to the laboratory. The programme is also meant to improve data collection and referral systems, and to fold cancer screening into family planning services.
In the first phase, in December 2025, more than 10,000 women were screened for breast cancer through clinical breast examinations. Four had abnormalities and were referred to the Alex Ekwueme Federal Teaching Hospital Abakaliki for further checks.
Musa Segun Terere, a senior scientific officer at NICRAT who represented Director-General Usman Malami, said NISCAN is built to find cancer early and link people with suspected abnormalities to the right facilities. Women with precancerous lesions can be treated with thermal ablation, he said, while those needing advanced care will be sent to tertiary hospitals.
Okeke said more equipment, including a thermal ablation machine and a colposcope, will be brought in for assessment and treatment. She described the exercise as a pilot and said awareness will be spread through community mobilisers and the media.
Two beneficiaries, Ibere Chinanye and Modester Oroke, thanked NICRAT for the free screening but asked for it to be extended and publicised on radio and television. They said many women still do not know about the programme.
What happens next
NICRAT plans to bring in the extra equipment and widen publicity. Ebonyi's government says it is willing to support screening 2,000 women instead of 200, but no date has been given for that expansion.
