When women talk about their ordeal with cervical cancer, I first hear gratitude that they survived. And then I hear frustration and fury that an almost entirely preventable cancer remains a continued and escalating threat. A woman is diagnosed with cervical cancer nearly every minute and dies every 90 seconds. By the time you read this article, someone somewhere will have lost a mother, wife, daughter, or sister to this vicious disease.
Cervical cancer should be akin to smallpox and polio by now — maladies seen more in history books than in modern-day medical clinics. After all, we have an extremely effective vaccine against the human papillomavirus, or HPV — the virus that causes more than 95% of all cervical cancer cases. The vaccine has been shown to be safe time and again, having been administered 500 million times since regulators approved it nearly 20 years ago.
But uptake of vaccination and screening is hampered by inequity, stigma, and lack of information. January is Cervical Cancer Awareness Month, and now is the time for action on cervical cancer elimination.