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She had traveled with a group of medical oncologists to bring a new radiation device to a hospital in Dakar, Senegal. There, she saw how many women were needlessly killed by a preventable and treatable disease: cervical cancer.
During their trip in 2012, the team experienced unplanned downtime and arranged to offer cervical cancer screenings to women in a remote and hard-hit region of Senegal.
“I came prepared with vaginal specula and all kinds of supplies to screen women,” she said.
Treatable if caught early, cervical cancer is prevalent in remote and resource-poor countries like Senegal, where Pap smears are not readily available and preventive health care is not accessible.
Using a method Gordon and others call “See & Treat,” the screening can be done without the need for electricity and with a few portable supplies.
“You spray vinegar on the cervix – if the cervix turns a little white in a certain light, then 99% (of patients) will benefit from the treatment,” Gordon said.
On their first morning screening, Gordon and the group of medical professionals were able to detect precancerous cells in eight women. However, the clinic they were visiting did not have the necessary equipment to treat them.
Gordon had heard a rumor that an abandoned health center might have the equipment they needed. So she set out on a three-hour expedition to find him.
“I ended up in this dusty clinic, and there’s this cryotherapy gun and this CO2 tank,” she said.
Gordon bought a washing machine needed to run the device and, with the help of a few locals, brought the equipment back to the clinic where the women were still waiting. The machine worked and the women were treated on the spot with a quick and easy procedure that destroys precancerous cells.
It was a far cry from how things worked in his Beverly Hills office, but the experience stuck with Gordon, whose family history of breast cancer is a driving force in his work.
“What has been incredibly rewarding for me is that in one day we can literally save 20, 30 lives depending on how many women we screen,” she said. “I knew I wanted to do this and see if I could get away with it.”
Gordon then teamed up with two other doctors and traveled to Ethiopia; this time they brought the cryotherapy machines with them. The results were similar. Using basic “See & Treat” techniques, the group detected and treated dozens of women and trained local nurses to do the same.
At the end of this trip, the team left a suitcase full of supplies for trained nurses so they could take them to underserved clinics.
After 27 years, Gordon left his private practice in 2014 to devote all of his time to CureCervicalCancer. She takes no salary.
She and her group use the “See & Treat” model and what they call a “Clinic in a Suitcase” to provide testing, training and supplies to clinics around the world. The organization has since worked in 10 countries, including China, Haiti, Guatemala, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania and Vietnam.
Over the past nine years, the association has also established 106 sustainable clinics to screen and treat women in remote and underserved areas.
“Most of the women we treat live about an hour and a half to two hours walk from the clinic,” she said. “I’m always surprised when they get there that there are smiles on their faces. They’re happy to be there, they don’t mind standing in line.”
The association has screened more than 150,000 women and treated more than 8,600 to date.
“The fact that there are 8,000 women alive and well and able to support their families is honestly the most rewarding thing I could have imagined in my life,” said Gordon. “I think I am the luckiest doctor who has ever lived.”
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