Australia May Become the First Country to Eradicate Cervical Cancer

If the current trend continues, Australia may become the first country to virtually eradicate the HPV virus that causes cervical cancer. How did they do it? Health officials credit an aggressive government-financed vaccination campaign begun in 2007 that targeted 12-13 yr.-old girls, combined with a catch-up program to vaccinate older girls and women up to the age of 26 that was completed in 2009.  By 2015, 53% of women in the now 18-35-yr.-old age group had been vaccinated. More importantly, rates of HPV infection have dropped from 22.7% to less than 1.5%. That's a 93% decline in HPV infection rates!

Why did HPV infection rates drop so dramatically when only 53% of the women have been vaccinated so far? It's the well-known "herd effect" - when enough people in a population are immune to a transmissible disease organism, it's much harder for the organism to be transmitted from person to person, even though some people are not yet immunized.

Although health officials have not yet seen a dramatic decrease in the number of cases of cervical cancer, that's because it can take years for cervical cancer to develop after HPV infection. At the moment, the number of cases of cervical cancer is just beginning to decline. Nevertheless, officials are confident that with continued aggressive vaccination against HPV, within 30-40 years cervical cancer will be a thing of the past in Australia.

The full HPV vaccination regimen costs about $400 per person in the U.S.; probably less in a country like Australia with a government-sponsored program. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.