Cervical Cancer Could Be Wiped Out in Australia in 20 Years: Study

Cervical cancer could be effectively eliminated in Australia in the next two decades due to an aggressive screening and vaccination program, according to a report published Wednesday in The Lancet Public Health. In a summary of the Lancet’s findings, The New York Times reports that by 2028, less than 4 in 100,000 Australian woman are expected to contract cervical cancer; by 2066, rates could be as low as one woman per year. The Times notes that this success is largely due to a country-wide vaccination campaign for young children, in which all three doses of the HPV vaccine were provided without cost. That campaign alone reduced the incidence of the HPV strains most likely to cause cervical cancer by 77 percent, according to the Cancer Council Australia. That program was complemented by screening programs for older women, to help them catch the disease before it worsened. The Times notes that other countries have failed to follow Australia’s lead—the HPV vaccination rate in Japan is all but zero; in the U.S., it’s 49 percent, in part due to anti-vaccination campaigns that have attempted to link vaccines with autism. “Australia is on track to become the first country to eliminate cervical cancer,” one cancer epidemiologist told the Times. “I think this shows the way forward for other countries.”