The “Global Cervical Cancer Elimination Forum: Advancing the Call to Action” will be held from 5 to 7 March 2024, in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia. The Forum aims to catalyze governments, donors, civil society, and others to commit to cervical cancer elimination and galvanize the global community.
Every year, cervical cancer continues to impact hundreds of thousands of women, families, and communities, even though we have all the tools we need to prevent it and even eliminate it, access to vaccines, screening, and treatment continues to be scarce in the places that need them most.
For additional information visit WHO webpage.
How to participate
- DATE: Tuesday, March 5 through Thursday, March 7, 2024
- LANGUAGES: English, Spanish, and French with simultaneous translation.
- LIVESTREAM: https://www.who.int/initiatives/cervical-cancer-elimination-initiative/cervical-cancer-forum
Organizing partner
- Government of Colombia
- Government of Spain
- Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
- Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance
- Global Financing Facility
- Pan American Health Organization (PAHO)
- UNICEF
- United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
- Unitaid
- World Bank
- World Health Organization
Context
WHO’s Global Strategy for Cervical Cancer Elimination, launched on 17 November 2020, lays out a clear path to eliminating the disease through vaccination, screening, and treatment. New evidence for a single-dose vaccine, and updated recommendations to simplify and increase access to screening and treatment, will reduce barriers to implementing WHO’s strategy. The strategy sets out 3 clear targets to meet by 2030 to put countries on the path to elimination:
- 90% of girls vaccinated against HPV by age 15
- 70% of women screened with a high-performance test by age 35 and again at 45
- 90% of women with cervical disease receive treatment
Annual deaths from cervical cancer will likely reach 410,000 by 2030 if we do not change course. This forum aims to be a pivotal moment and a historic first step in securing government commitments to eliminate, for the first time, a full category of cancer on a global scale.
Links of interest
Global strategy to accelerate the elimination of cervical cancer as a public health problem.
This global strategy to eliminate cervical cancer proposes a mathematical model that illustrates the following interim benefits of achieving the 90–70–90 targets by 2030 in low- and lower-middle-income countries: median cervical cancer incidence rate will fall by 42% by 2045, and by 97% by 2120, averting more than 74 million new cases of cervical cancer;
median cumulative number of cervical cancer deaths averted will be 300,000 by 2030, over 14 million by 2070, and over 62 million by 2120.