in developing world feasible for first time
http://uicc.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=16470&Itemid=537GENEVA, Switzerland - Recent advances in cervical cancer prevention mean that controlling the disease in developing countries is becoming feasible for the first time, experts say.
Developments such as highly effective vaccines against the human papilloma virus (HPV) and promising new screening tests provide an unprecedented opportunity to tackle the disease in poor countries, where pap smear screening has largely failed because it is too expensive and too complicated to implement, the experts said in a series of papers on the topic unveiled Thursday at the World Cancer Congress of the International Union Against Cancer in Geneva.
The papers are contained in a monograph published in the journal Vaccine. They present the best global thinking on cervical cancer prevention with vaccination and screening, as well as fresh regional and national research and insights to guide governments and donors in building plans. An independent collaboration of more than 180 leading experts, the monograph evaluates which strategies are most promising and likely to be most cost-effective and affordable and sets out various scenarios for programmes.
Every year, about 500,000 women worldwide are diagnosed with cervical cancer and more than 250,000 die from the disease. It is the leading cancer in women in half the countries of the world and mostly affects relatively young poor women. About 80%of cervical cancer deaths occur in developing countries.
"Recent estimates indicate that if trends continue the way they are, developing countries will face a 75% increase in the number of cervical cancer cases because of growth and aging of the population in the next two decades. But it doesn't have to turn out that way," said the coordinator of the monograph, Professor Francesc Xavier Bosch of the Catalan Institute of Oncology in Barcelona, Spain. "The discovery of HPV as the cause of cervical cancer has shaken a field that was stagnating and we are now in a new era where developing countries no longer have to be left behind."
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