Human papillomavirus (HPV): a VaccinesWork guide
This week, VaccinesWork’s spotlight is falling on HPV and cervical cancer, which kills hundreds of thousands of women every year with lower-income countries bearing the heaviest burden.
- 7 October 2024
- 3 min read
- by Maya Prabhu , James Fulker
In 2010, there was a room in the Mulago National Referral Hospital in Kampala, Uganda, that was occupied only by women who had advanced cervical cancer. The room was full.
The obstetrician-gynaecologist leading the team in charge was impressively energetic and understandably frustrated: most women admitted to the unit were past operating, she said – a combination of a woeful screening system and widespread cultural anxiety about hospitals meant women often didn’t show up on the health care system’s radar until they were extremely ill.
I – Maya – was very young, which I mention to excuse the fact that my stomach plunged with panic as I walked into the room.
It was quiet in there, and the air seemed somehow constricted with pain. Under the tang of disinfectant shimmered the cloying, oily smell of sick bodies. I noticed a woman in one bed – so thin that her form barely made a ridge under the blanket – who was curled towards a tiny baby.
Ah yes, said the doctor in a hushed voice, this was a rare and sad case: she had managed to carry her child to term, giving birth just days earlier, but she was unlikely to be around much longer. I used to dream about them.
This morning I realised that if that child was a girl she’d be 14 now, which means she’d be eligible for the vaccine that would almost certainly have spared her mother if it had been available sooner.
Our story archive is full of ghosts like hers: women born a generation too soon, their losses recalled with regret by their children and their mothers and fathers and husbands, as human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination campaigns crank up in the lower-income countries where cervical cancer has historically recorded the highest tolls.
But the vaccine is available now, in more and more places, and for free. Last year, Gavi helped get 14 million girls vaccinated against HPV, more than the number vaccinated in the entire preceding decade. Between 2014 and 2023, Gavi’s support for the vaccine’s roll-out has helped an estimated 600,000 girls avoid future deaths from cervical cancer, and that number is about to leap. By the end of 2025, the aggregate number of girls vaccinated with Gavi’s help will reach 86 million.
More girls still will be protected in the years after that, if the Vaccine Alliance gets the funding it needs to do the work it has planned. Gavi is raising US$ 9 billion to pay for all its activities, including HPV vaccine introductions and roll-outs, but also childhood vaccination for half the world’s kids, strengthening health systems and supporting potentially transformative innovations, during the five-year period spanning 2026–2030.
And now, please join us to revisit some of our favourite HPV stories from the archive.
– The Editors
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Zambian broadcaster Karen Nakawala was diagnosed with cervical cancer four years ago. She survived, though many friends she made didn’t. Today she’s on a mission to convince girls across the world to get the HPV vaccine.
Immaculate infection: the riddle of HPV in Ghana's nuns
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Cartoon heroes: the comic book teaching Ugandan kids the value of HPV vaccination
Cervical cancer kills thousands of Ugandan women each year. That’s what the “Adventures of Adriko and Nampijja” is trying to change.
How one father’s love is helping shield Nigeria’s daughters from cervical cancer
The tragic loss of his wife to cervical cancer ignited Borno state immunisation officer Maina Modu's determination to protect not only his daughters, but all young girls in the state from the vaccine-preventable disease.
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With cervical cancer killing one woman every two minutes, rolling out the HPV vaccine that can almost entirely prevent this killer disease is essential.
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