Cervical cancer being one of the most preventable and treatable types of cancer, still has a mortality rate as high as the Ebola virus infection. It is the 2nd most prevalent cancer among Indian women and we lose one woman every eight minutes to cervical cancer in India. 90% of cervical cancer deaths happen in developing countries which can be attributed to the lack of screening programs. More than 95% of these cases are caused by the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV). HPV infection still remains a silent killer, as it progresses to cervical cancer as a result of untimely detection of the virus. Other factors such as lack of awareness, costly vaccines and invasive testing also contribute to the problem. Early detection of an HPV infection can make cervical cancer entirely preventable.

“Science is not finished until it's communicated”. We firmly believe in this quote and have given our best effort into scientific communication. Scientific communication is an essential component for raising awareness of the general public and the growth of scientific communities. To achieve the same, we have shared our insights in combating cervical cancer with the masses and have promoted young, budding science enthusiasts to prepare themselves to face upcoming problems. We achieved this through the following:


1.  Interactive sessions to raise awareness among various sections of the people ranging from highschool to undergraduate and postgraduate college students
      
     (i) We conducted synthetic biology workshops at various high schools and covered topics such as synthetic biology and its real world applications, machine learning and artificial intelligence, and gave a brief about the problem of cervical cancer diagnosis.
       
     (ii) A webinar series 'we talk' was conducted in collaboration with iGEM teams of IISER Berhampur, IISER  Thiruvananthapuram, and IISER Tirupati. Topics such as cervical and breast cancer were discussed by a renowned oncologist.

2.  Digital media was used in the form of articles and surveys to increase our reach to a wider section of the society:
     (i) An online survey was conducted to understand the level of awareness among the communities around us, particularly middle aged women, while disseminating information at the same time. Questions related to HPV vaccination and cervical cancer screening were asked to get a better understanding of the scale of this problem.
      (ii) An article was published in the synthetic biology review journal in collaboration with Stony Brook University. The article covers our problem statement and the proposed solution in a descriptive manner and is aimed towards the science community.
      (iii) Another article was published through Prasar Bharti News Services (PBNS). The article explains our project in a simplified, easy-to-read manner and is directed towards the general public to spread awareness about cervical cancer.
  3.  People from rural areas and even patients were interviewed to get a better grasp of our problem at the very elementary level
      (i) We also collaborated with Unnat Bharat Abhiyan (UBA) IIT Roorkee in an attempt to tackle the problem of lack of awareness on the very grassroot level. Residents of various villages were educated and made aware of the problem of cervical cancer in the native language of Hindi. A hand written survey was also performed to get a better understanding of the awareness levels among village residents.

      (ii) We interviewed a cervical cancer patient to further understand and sympathize with the cause.    

An iGEM project at every step of the way involves thinking about the various stakeholders that would be affected by our project. We engaged with experts to gain their opinions and formulate consolidated insights from all our interactions and finally apply them to our project as we moved forth in this journey. Throughout our research the focus points were:
1.  Understanding the reasons that lead to us as a society falling short in the constant battle against Cervical cancer-
     a. We learnt that most of the cases that are curable if detected early, but are detected at later stages due to the poor accessibility and taboo surrounding existing screening methods.
     b. We conducted surveys to assess how much people are informed about existing provisions for detection and prevention of cervical cancer.

2.  Integrating human practices into coming up with ideas for developing the protocol for our kit
      a. We identified the crucial role played by CRISPR cas12 technology in point of care and easy to use diagnostics to address the low screening rates.
      b. We kept in mind the attractive route of commercialization for designing poc kits to provide a closed system with minimal handling specially in India.
      c. We met and organized informative sessions with industrial, research experts as well as doctors with specializations in different fields of public healthcare to improve the efficiency of our kit from as many aspects as possible.

We hope that our extensive work can help Lit up the Torch of Change and bring forth a difference in the detection of life-threatening disease of Cervical Cancer especially in the rural areas. More importantly, we hope that our efforts would enable an open dialogue on the raging issues of Sexual Health which are considered a taboo especially in the low resource areas. We hope that the Scientific and the Medical community will further use our work to give viable inputs to create an inclusive, Open Medical System and an Awakened, Sensitive and Aware Society.