Cervical cancer screening is the testing for pre-cancer and cancer of women at risk, most of whom will be without symptoms. Cervical cancer screening is the systematic application of a test to identify cervical abnormalities in an asymptomatic population. However, despite availability of gold standard method Pap-smear for cervical cancer diagnosis present mostly in urban settings of India, cervical cancer has been diagnosed late in women residing in rural areas due to a lack of testing facilities and unawareness about the disease which is preventable and treatable if diagnosed early. There is limited country-wide government-sponsored public health policy on the prevention of cervical cancer by either mass screening or vaccination or both (ICMR, 2016, WHO, 2002) and affecting women in their most productive years of life. Early detection and treatment of precancerous lesions can prevent the majority of cervical cancers. India being a developing country with a different demographic and socio-economically to other developed countries, low-cost cervical cancer diagnostic kits for mass screening  would encourage suspected women to get screened for cervical cancer would be a step towards early detection and further treatment is the need of an hour.

Rashmi Chowdhary has done MSc, MPhil, PhD and working as an Additional Professor at the Department of Biochemistry, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Bhopal, and Madhya Pradesh, India. Joined the institute as Assistant Professor in 2012. Apart from medical teaching and looking after clinical biochemistry diagnostic hospital services also worked as PI for a few extramural research projects funded by ICMR, DHR, DST Govt of India. She has been appointed as a Member of the Regional Virology Lab from the Department of Health Research (DHR) for setting up the BSL-II, III virology lab, Member Secretary Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBSC). Has published articles in the peer review journals and filed patents (Orcid no. 0000-0003-0815-4103). Previously worked as a Research Scientist at the center for Immunity and Infection (CII) Columbia University, New York, USA (2008-12) Research Associate WHO, SEARO, SGPGIMS, Lucknow (2004-08) and a recipient of the Mario Escobar Award at the Clinical Virology Symposium (CVS) 2009, Florida, USA.