The eighty-year plan
Scientists from Australia said that in most countries cervical cancer will be defeated by the end of the century
Dmitry Mazalev, Naked Science
Calculations by scientists from Australia show that the WHO goal of global elimination of cervical cancer is quite achievable: according to them, if next year it is possible to achieve widespread vaccination and expand cervical screening, this type of cancer can be eliminated in 149 of 181 countries by the end of the century.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), cervical cancer affects more than half a million women annually and kills a quarter of a million. One woman dies of cervical cancer every two minutes, which makes it one of the most serious threats. However, we can overcome the disease. So, using dynamic models and data from the International Agency for Research on Cancer, University of Sydney researchers predict that these measures will prevent up to 13.4 million cases of cervical cancer within 50 years, that is, by 2069.
"More than two–thirds of the prevented cases will be in countries with low and medium levels of human development, such as India, Nigeria and Malawi, where access to HPV (human papillomavirus, or human papillomavirus) vaccination or cervical screening has been limited so far," says cancer epidemiologist and lead author of the study Karen Kanfell (Karen Canfell). The corresponding article was published in the journal The Lancet Oncology.
The end result of these measures is definitely worth fighting for: due to population growth and aging, the number of cases of cervical cancer in the world will increase from 600,000 in 2020 to 1.3 million in 2069. About 85 percent of cases of this disease develop in less developed regions, partly because screening and vaccination rates are significantly lower there. A new study shows that if we fail to expand these prevention programs, more than 44 million women worldwide will be diagnosed with cervical cancer within the next 50 years, and of this number, about two-thirds could lead to the death of 15 million people. As the head of WHO stated last year, the organization's task is to ensure that all girls in the world are vaccinated against HPV and every woman over the age of 30 is screened.
In this sense, Australia can serve as an excellent example: the local national prevention program works so well that, according to experts, the incidence rate in the country may fall below the elimination threshold (four per 100 thousand) in just nine years. Other high-income countries, such as the USA, Finland, the UK and Canada, can achieve similar results in 25-40 years. States considered less developed, such as Ethiopia, Haiti and Papua New Guinea, may need several decades more.
Nevertheless, Africa is so far behind that even if prevention programs expand rapidly, none of the countries in this region will be able to defeat cervical cancer by 2100. A study by Australian scientists shows how much work remains to be done and how many people can be lost if active measures are not taken in the very near future.
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