HPV Vaccine - Vaccination and Public Health

Vaccination and Public Health

Widespread vaccination has the potential to reduce cervical cancer deaths around the world by as much as two-thirds, if all women were to take the vaccine and if protection turns out to be long-term. In addition, the vaccines can reduce the need for medical care, biopsies, and invasive procedures associated with the follow-up from abnormal Pap tests, thus helping to reduce health care costs and anxieties related to abnormal Pap tests and follow-up procedures. —American National Cancer Institute,

Comments made by Dr. Diane Harper, researcher for the HPV vaccines, were interpreted as indicating that in countries where Pap smear screening is common, it will take vaccination of a large proportion of women in order to further reduce cervical cancer rates.

Current preventive vaccines protect against the two HPV types (16 and 18) that cause about 70% of cervical cancers worldwide. Because of the distribution of HPV types associated with cervical cancer, the vaccines are likely to be most effective in Asia, Europe and North America. Some other high risk types cause a larger percentage of cancers in other parts of the world. Vaccines that protect against more of the types common in cancers would prevent more cancers, and be less subject to regional variation. For instance, a vaccine against the seven types most common in cervical cancers (16, 18, 45, 31, 33, 52, 58) would prevent an estimated 87% of cervical cancers worldwide.

Only 41% of women with cervical cancer in the developing world get medical treatment. Therefore, prevention of HPV by vaccination may be a more effective way of lowering the disease burden in developing countries than cervical screening. The European Society of Gynecological Oncology sees the developing world as most likely to benefit from HPV vaccination. However, individuals in many resource-limited nations, Kenya for example, are unable to afford the vaccine.

In more developed countries, populations that do not receive adequate medical care, such as poor or minorities in the United States or parts of Europe also have less access to cervical screening and appropriate treatment, and are similarly more likely to benefit.