“Our work is based on a review of 15 years of studies from Argentina, Barbados, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Surinam and Venezuela,” said co-author Maria Teresa Valenzuela, professor at the University of the Andes in Chile. “This study provides us with concrete information, based on data from 33,000 apparently healthy women, but we believe that it under-reports the problem of HPV and its impact. This is a significant public health problem, as there is no case of cervical cancer that’s not caused by HPV.”

The study also highlights the inequities in access to the health services that can prevent HPV from progressing to cervical cancer, Valenzuela noted.

For example, it estimates that of the 86,000 women in the Americas who are diagnosed each year with HPV-related cervical cancer, some 72,000 live in Latin America and the Caribbean, which also accounts for almost all of the annual cervical cancer deaths in the Americas. One study found that in Mexico between 1990 and 2000, for example, on average one woman died every two hours from cervical cancer.

“Cervical cancer is a disease of poverty. We know that 80% of the women dying from cervical cancer come from poorer countries, where access to the kind of quality screening and treatment that largely prevents pre-cancerous lesions caused by HPV from progressing and killing women is simply not available. This is the case for most countries of Latin America and the Caribbean,” said Jon Andrus, Lead Technical Advisor, Immunization Unit, PAHO. “The tragedy is that cervical cancer can be prevented if we focus simultaneously on improving access to screening, treatment, and on introducing HPV vaccines when they become affordable. If we collectively act now, something can be done.”

The two HPV vaccines currently available are virtually 100 percent effective at preventing infections from the two strains of HPV responsible for the majority of cervical cancers. Though, they are not “therapeutic vaccines” in that they cannot be used to treat pre-existing infections, and thus are not a substitute for strengthening screening and treatment.

The analysis of HPV and cervical cancer presented in Mexico City includes new data on the potential impact of HPV vaccination in six countries—Argentina, Peru, Chile, Mexico, Brazil and Colombia. It found that if for ten consecutive years, 70 percent of 12-year-old girls were vaccinated, HPV immunizations could prevent half a million deaths.

When vaccines become affordable, the study acknowledges that widespread adoption of HPV vaccine will also reinforce efforts by countries to improve screening programs for cervical cancer. Disease experts believe the vaccine is so effective at preventing the majority of cervical cancers that screening would only need to be done two or three times in the lifetime of a woman - far less than the screening by cervical cytology (Pap smear) every two or three years generally recommended for women who have not received the vaccine.

“The need for fewer screening tests would provide a window of opportunity for governments to shift their attention to improving screening quality and to focus more on follow-up and treatment,” said PAHO’s Silvana Luciani, Project Manager in the Unit of Non-communicable Diseases.