Ibrahima Teguete

Ibrahima Teguete has been involved in the women healthcare early in his career when he graduated as General Practitioner from the National School of Medicine in 1995. This unique experience at the Department Family and Community Health of the National Direction of Health, Mali, made him aware of the burden of diseases endangering women in his country. Above all, maternal death rates and cervical cancer incidence were particularly high. These two epidemic situations influenced my specialization in obstetrics and gynecology during which he conducted a research on the management of precancerous lesions in Angers, France, as a dissertation. When he returned home in as a young gynecologist, his main field of interest was the prevention and management of gynecologic and breast cancers. Over the years, he has published extensively regarding his observations and has looked for ways to intervene. Presently, his team is working on the planning and implementation of a rigorous and ambitious cervical cancer screening program. At the end of the first phase (18 months), 150,000 women were screened and over 1,000 women were treated for precancerous and cancerous lesions. Strengths and barriers to cervical cancer screening have been identified and specific recommendations formulated for scaling up. They are also running a cervical cancer screening in female sex workers in Bamako in partnership with the Laval University, Quebec, Canada.