Global health donors pledged nearly $600 million towards eliminating cervical cancer on Tuesday, at the first global forum dedicated to fighting the disease.
The World Bank, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said in a joint statement that the funding would go towards expanding access to vaccination, screening, and treatment worldwide.
The global health donors said if the ambitions to expand vaccine coverage and strengthen screening and treatment programmes are fully realized, the world could eliminate cancer for the first time.
The nearly $600m in new funding includes $180m from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, $10m from UNICEF, and $400m from the World Bank.
Cervical Cancer
Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer in women worldwide and continues to disproportionately impact women and their families in low and middle-income countries (LMIC).
A woman dies of cervical cancer roughly every two minutes, around 90 per cent of them in LMIC, the partners said, where access to preventative vaccines as well as screening and treatment can be very limited.
That contrasts with many high-income countries that introduced the vaccine in the 2000s. The shot protects against the human papillomavirus virus (HPV), the leading cause of cervical cancer worldwide.
Vaccination against HPV– can prevent the vast majority of cases and, combined with screening and treatment, provides a path to elimination.
Nigeria launched its HPV vaccine programme in October, adopting the single-dose schedule for girls nine to 14 years old, and now commits to achieving at least 80 per cent vaccine coverage of girls targeted by 2026.
The World Health Organization (WHO)’s Director-General, Tedros Ghebreyesus, said “We have the knowledge and the tools to make cervical cancer history, but the programmes are still not reaching the scale required”.
Mr Ghebreyesus said the Global Cervical Cancer Elimination forum, held in Cartagena, Colombia, presented the opportunity to change this, as governments and global health partners committed to work together on ending the disease.
The WHO has already endorsed countries switching from a two or three-dose vaccination strategy to one-dose, to protect more girls. Countries at the forum like the Democratic Republic of Congo said they would start introducing the shot as soon as possible.
Challenges
The WHO noted there are many challenges on the path to elimination.
It said due to supply constraints, delivery challenges and the COVID-19 pandemic, just one in five eligible adolescent girls were vaccinated in 2022.
The global health body noted that while there are cost-effective and evidence-based tools for screening and treatment, fewer than five per cent of women in many LMICs are ever screened for cervical cancer.
“Health system constraints, costs, logistical issues, and lack of political will have created obstacles to implementing comprehensive programmes for cervical cancer prevention and treatment.
“These barriers have led to deep inequity: of the estimated 348,000 cervical cancer deaths in 2022, over 90 per cent took place in LMICs. With governments and partners recommitting urgently to the global agenda, it is possible to reverse the tide and prevent annual deaths from rising to 410,000 by 2030, as currently estimated,” it stated.