Ending cervical cancer requires a strategic plan – one I am deeply passionate about and proud to pursue. This plan involves people learning, adapting, and nurturing what truly matters. Since the 90-70-90 strategy for cervical cancer elimination was implemented in 2020, it has been encouraging to see progress made towards vaccinating, screening, and treating girls and women. By 2030, we hope to fully vaccinate 90% of young girls with the HPV vaccine by age 15, to screen 70% of women with high-performance tests, and to treat 90% of women diagnosed with cervical disease, but this goal can only be achieved if global leaders remain focused on the task. Five years into the strategy, many young girls (and boys) remain unvaccinated, and few women are screened. As a result, many affected women remain untreated, leading to late-stage diagnoses of the disease. If we fail to complete the task, it will reinforce the misleading message that ending cervical cancer is impossible and cannot be a priority when other global crises loom.
At a time when we are close to ending cervical cancer, losing momentum, resources, and commitment could spell disaster for many families where women are the primary breadwinners or their lives are cut short when their children need them the most. My family and I know this experience all too well with the death of my sister-in-law, Angie. She was never screened, and by the time she was diagnosed, it was too late. So much of my work is a tribute to Angie and ensuring her name and legacy are not forgotten.
I am encouraged as I witness countries making an effort to vaccinate their girls and people, communities, and researchers clamoring to get more women screened and treated. One of the Light Institute’s studies, the Actions for Collaborative Community Engaged Strategies for HPV (ACCESS), is one such study based in Nigeria. The goal is to learn as we engage young girls and their mothers to increase the uptake of essential HPV prevention services. It is difficult to do justice to the scale of efforts to not only vaccinate daughters but also screen women, but our mother-daughter days have made incredible progress towards achieving the 90-70 (vaccination and screening) targets in Nigeria. I am so proud of this progress, the ACCESS team, and all of the mothers and daughters who have entrusted us with protecting their health and life.
However, with the treatment goal, we are struggling, so we need to adapt some of our strategies to ensure that we get treatment to all women. Most countries, especially low-income nations with inadequate healthcare systems, are also grappling with this challenge. The looming threat is that if communities with limited access to treatment cease to prioritize the elimination of cervical cancer, the entire global effort to achieve the 90-70-90 target could unravel. Therefore, we cannot afford to be complacent or lose traction and must nurture this priority by supporting communities and countries in their pursuit of national 90-70-90 targets.
I am hopeful that global leaders will continue to send a clear message that cervical cancer remains a global priority, knowing the most effective way to achieve this is by supporting every effort to eradicate it for everyone. The 90-70-90 targets are in a race against time, and the only way to emerge victorious is to meticulously plan how to achieve them with the right individuals learning, adapting, nurturing these targets, and never giving up.
