Data analysis on cervical cancer in Africa.

As January marks cervical cancer awareness month, it prompts a reflection of this common yet often misunderstood form of cancer. but what significance does this hold for Africa?

In today’s analysis, I will explore the incidence, mortality, and prevalence of cervical cancer in Africa.

What is cervical cancer?

Cervical cancer is the growth of cells that starts in the cervix typically triggered by persistent infections of certain high-risk strains of the HPV, which is a common infection that is passed through sexual contact.

When exposed to HPV, the body’s immune system prevents the virus from harming. In a small percentage of people, however, the virus survives for years. This contributes to the process that causes some cervical cells to become cancer cells.

Objectives of the analysis.

1. Identify causes of cervical cancer in Africa.
2. Highlighting the significance of cervical cancer awareness.
3. Determine geographical variation in incidences, mortality, and prevalence.
4. Prevention and initiative strategies.

Terms definition

• Cervical cancer incidence . This refers to the number of times cervical cancer occurs.
• Cervical cancer mortality. This refers to the number of deaths occurring from cervical cancer.
• Age-standardized rates (ASR) are rates used to compare cancer occurrences or mortality rates between populations with different age structures.
• Cumulative risk. This refers to the probability of developing cancer over a specified period or during a lifetime.

Causes of cervical cancer in Africa.

1. HPV infection through early sexual activity and multiple sexual partners.
2. Lack of awareness of the importance of regular screenings for cervical cancer.
3. Limited healthcare infrastructure and HPV vaccination programs.
4. Cultural beliefs about the causes of illness and traditional healing practices.

Significance of Cervical Cancer Awareness in Africa.

Cervical cancer awareness in Africa increases understanding and knowledge about the disease, which empowers individuals to take preventive measures, get screened, and seek early treatment.

This action saves lives and contributes to better overall women’s health in Africa.

Data mining for the cervical cancer analysis.

There are various sources of cervical cancer data for analysis on different sites on the internet.

For this analysis, I have obtained the data from the World Cancer Research Fund International, on the link attached below https://www.wcrf.org/cancer-trends/cervical-cancer-statistics/.

The website offers a worldwide overview of cervical cancer, leading to the need to filter the information specifically for Africa to align with my analysis.

To meet my other objectives, this is where I perform an ETL process from the identified website to answer questions on occurrences, mortality, and prevalence.

Data cleaning and modeling tools.

For this analysis, I will use both Microsoft Excel and Power Query to clean and model my data. I have created five different Excel workbooks to normalize the creation of relationships in the model view. Below is a snippet of each table on the power query

• Table 1: Cervical cancer incidence table

• Table 2: Cervical cancer Mortality table

• Table 4: Cervical Cancer region table

Creating relationships between the datasets.

To normalize the data for more standard analysis, it is important to assign each table a primary key as shown in the above tables, and link them using either a one-to-one or one-to-many type of relationship as shown below.

Cervical cancer visualization through PowerBI.

Observation.

Through my analysis of cervical cancer incidence and mortality rates in Africa, it has become evident that Eswatini, followed closely by Malawi and Zambia, faces a significant burden of this disease. These findings underscore the urgent need for targeted interventions and healthcare strategies to address the challenges posed by cervical cancer in these countries.