20 Years of a Vaccine That Stops Cancers

 

By Anna R. Giuliano, PhD, President, International Papillomavirus Society

For five straight years, not one young woman in England died of cervical cancer.

Between 2020 and 2024, deaths in women aged 20 to 24 fell to zero – a first. That’s because each had been given a vaccine at 12 or 13 years of age, a vaccine many people today still do not realise prevents cervical cancer.

This disease is one of the great killers of women worldwide – and still the second most common cancer death in women under 65. In 2024 alone, it took more than 279,000 lives. Almost every one of those deaths traces back to the same cause: a persistent infection with a high-risk type of human papillomavirus, or HPV.

But HPV is even more insidious. It drives other cancers – in both men and women. Cancers of the anus, throat, penis, vagina and vulva. Indeed, it is one of the most common cancer-causing infections on earth.

That discovery prompted researchers to build a vaccine that could block the virus and prevent the cancers it causes. The first vaccine was licensed in 2006.

Seven HPV vaccines now exist. Five carry the World Health Organization's seal of approval, and they share something rare in medicine: an outstanding safety record and results that hold up across every country that has studied them.

And those results are extraordinary. In England, vaccinating girls at 12 or 13 has cut cervical cancer diagnoses by nearly 90%. The Queen Mary study estimates the programme has already prevented around 200 deaths – and that figure will climb every year as vaccinated girls grow into women.

Put plainly: a girl vaccinated at 12 or 13 now has close to zero risk of dying from cervical cancer before she turns 30 – the oldest age the evidence yet covers.

In addition, growing evidence shows the vaccine also shields men from the infections that cause oral and anal cancers.

So we have a vaccine that is safe and stops multiple cancers. Why then is every child on the planet not getting it?

While 165 countries now offer HPV vaccination, only about a third of the world's girls have had even one dose.

The gap is largely one of wealth. Every rich country runs a programme. Among the poorest, fewer than half do – and only a quarter of their girls are protected. A cancer we know how to prevent is being left to spread where help is scarcest.

This is why, in 2018, the WHO and its 194 member states set an audacious goal: to wipe out cervical cancer as a public health problem altogether. It would be the first cancer ever eliminated by deliberate global effort.

The plan has a name – 90–70–90 – and a deadline of 2030. Ninety per cent of girls vaccinated by the time they are 15 years old. Seventy per cent of women screened with an accurate test. Ninety per cent of women with cervical disease properly treated. Hit those three targets, and cervical cancer fades from the population.

That goal, even in poorer countries, is now easier to achieve than ever before. For years, protection meant two doses, sometimes three – each one a cost, and a logistical hurdle in places with few clinics and fewer nurses.

In 2022, the science shifted. The World Health Organization gave countries the option to vaccinate with one or two doses, as emerging data show a single dose may protect just as well in adolescent girls.

One dose changes the arithmetic. It cuts the cost, simplifies delivery and lets a fixed budget reach far more girls. More than 45 countries have already switched or committed to switch.

The vaccine that was hard to deliver in the poorest of countries is now far easier. The target is within reach.

The English data show what full coverage can do. What remains is not a scientific problem but a human one – reaching every girl and boy, everywhere, with a vaccine that already exists to prevent all six cancers caused by HPV.

We have spent 20 years proving this vaccine works. The task for the next 20 is to make sure no girl or boy misses out, wherever they live.