Women living with HIV are up to six times more likely to develop cervical cancer – a disease that is preventable with HPV vaccination, routine screening, and treatment of precancerous lesions.
Today, on World Cancer Day, we celebrate that our Go Further partnership with the Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEFPAR) and UNAIDS has completed more than 10 million cervical cancer screenings women living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa. Of those screenings, approximately 68% represent women screened for the first time.
Launched in 2018, Go Further aims to eliminate cervical cancer deaths among HIV-positive women in 12 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
Why this matters
Roughly 110,000 women in sub-Saharan Africa were diagnosed with cervical cancer annually, of which 66% will die from the disease, making it one of the deadliest cancers for women in the region.
Go Further countries work to meet or surpass treatment goals set forth in the 2018 global strategy to accelerate the elimination of cervical cancer as a public health problem. These goals include:
- 90% of girls within the country are fully vaccinated against HPV by 15
- 70% of eligible women are screened for cervical cancer with a high-performance test at specified age intervals
- 90% of women identified with precancerous lesions and invasive cervical cancer are treated and provided care.
Each country should meet the 90-70-90 targets by 2030 to ensure the world can eliminate cervical cancer in the next 100 years.
For over 20 years PEPFAR has worked alongside countries, communities, and the private sector to provide HIV/AIDS screening, prevention, and treatment programming. The realization that women were surviving AIDS (a treatable but uncurable disease), but dying from cervical cancer led to the creation of Go Further.
Go Further integrates cervical cancer screening and treatment into PEPFAR’s health system to ensure that women at the highest risk have access to care. Through the program, over 425,000 treatments for precancerous lesions have been performed, ensuring that women living with HIV continue to live healthy, productive lives.
What’s next
The world is just five years short of 2030 – the target date for the 90-70-90 targets and the sustainable development goal to end HIV/AIDS as a public health threat. As countries move closer to this end date, several points must be considered:
- Congressional support for – and continuation of – PEPFAR would ensure active oversight of the program by requiring PEPFAR to advance and sustain its results, address gaps, improve efficiency across all programmatic areas through real-time data, and increase the accountability and financial responsibility of host-country governments.
- Improvements across the entire continuum of cervical cancer care -prevention, screening, diagnosis, treatment, care, and survivorship – are critical. These improvements can occur only through appropriate policies and guidelines as well as through resourcing, both human and financial.
- To ensure countries sustain the response to cervical cancer, country governments, the international community, donors, and bilateral partners must work together to address consistent political, financial, and resource challenges in the coming years.
- Because of decades of PEPFAR’s partnership, political will, and community dedication, several countries have reached, or are close to reaching, the international targets for HIV/AIDS and cervical cancer. The governments of upper-middle-income countries must increase their investments in health care significantly to sustain gains already made. Alternatively, the governments of low- and lower-middle-income countries must address the specific gaps that are preventing them from achieving the internationally agreed-upon goals.
