By setting up organized screening for Cervical cancer, the French health authorities hope to reduce the incidence and mortality linked to this pathology by 30%, explained the gynecologists of the French Society of Colposcopy and Cervicovaginal Pathology (SFCPCV) to Top Health. A strategy that should pay off, confirms a study published in the journal The Lancet Oncology this Tuesday, February 19. According to the researchers, within forty years in very high-income countries and by the end of the century in most states, this cancer could indeed be eradicated thanks to generalization of vaccination and screening.
If these measures were put in place by 2020, the average number of cervical cancers could indeed drop below four cases per 100,000 women, the study authors said. “This is the potential threshold below which cervical cancer could be considered to be eliminated as a public health problem », they defined. In Australia, for example, thanks to a national vaccination and screening program against the papillomavirus, the pathology is already on the verge of becoming a rare disease, with seven cases out of 100,000.
Eradication possible with the right tools
A few days ago, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched a worldwide call for the eradication of cervical cancer. She reported that each year more than half a million women are diagnosed with it and 300,000 women die from it. “Despite the scale of the problem, our work seems to show that global eradication of the disease is possible with the tools at our disposal, provided that vaccination coverage and screening increase”, says lead author Karen Canfell, quoted by The world.
To reach their conclusions, the researchers based themselves on the assumption that from 2020, more than 80% of girls aged 12 to 15 will be vaccinated with papillomaviruses, and that 70% of women will be screened twice. times in their life.
If this were the case and according to statistical projections, the rate would thus fall below the bar of four cases per 100,000 women by 2059 in developed countries such as France, for example. A line crossed by 2069 in countries with a high level of development (such as Brazil or China), by 2079 in countries with a medium level of development (India or Vietnam) and by 2100 in countries low level of development (Ethiopia or Haiti).
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