Cervical cancer is set to become a rare disease in Australia within just two years and rendered so uncommon by 2028 it will be deemed eliminated as a public health problem for the first time anywhere in the world.
The new forecast has been detailed in research in the Lancet Public Health Journal, which found that although global deaths from the disease still exceed 310,000 each year, Australia is heading towards a scenario where cervical cancer would be almost unheard of.
The positive prediction has been largely credited to the introduction a decade ago of the world-leading national human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination program for schoolchildren, but key changes began in 1991 with the beginning of the country’s pap smear program.
In the decades afterwards, cervical cancer rates in women dropped about 50 per cent, as abnormalities were identified before they developed.
Sophie Weisz was 14 when she first received the HPV vaccine. She'd now be in her late 20s.
Photo: Peter RaeThe incidence of cervical cancer in Australia now stands at seven cases per 100,000, about half the global average.
Now research from Cancer Council NSW argues the most dramatic improvements are still to come, as the first recipients of the early HPV vaccination program begin to reach their mid thirties.
In just two years, cervical cancer could be officially considered a rare cancer in Australia, with six new cases per 100,000 women annually.
If current practices continue, the disease will be all but eradicated by 2066, when there will be about one case per 100,000. By 2100 there would be just three deaths per million women (compared to 21 deaths per million, or about 260 deaths each year today).
Professor Ian Frazer, the co-inventor of the technology behind the HPV vaccine, said he expected that in time cervical cancer would be completely eliminated from Australia and the world.
“Because this human papillomavirus only infects humans and the vaccine program prevents the spread of the virus, eventually we'll get rid of it, like we did with smallpox,” Professor Frazer said.
“It’s not going to happen in my lifetime, but it could happen in the lifetime of my kids if they go about it the right way.”
The free national HPV vaccination program was first rolled out to Australian schoolgirls aged 12 to 13 in 2007, and was expanded to boys in 2013.
The current vaccine works by protecting recipients against the types of HPV that cause about 90 per cent of cervical cancers worldwide. It also prevents cases of genital warts, and a number of other cancers of the cervix, anus, vulva, vagina, penis and throat.
Professor Karen Canfell, director of research at Cancer Council NSW, said although the impact of the vaccine on cervical cancer deaths was yet to be felt, they had observed promising signs in the vaccinated group, including a fall in cervical precancerous lesions. Other research has observed plummeting cases of genital warts.
Dozens of countries around the world now vaccinate their teenagers from HPV, but many are still missing out, as the vaccine remains relatively expensive, even when offered at a lower price in developing countries.
“There are now about 570,000 women worldwide diagnosed with cervical cancer a year. And 311,000 women will die from it. They are predominantly in lower and middle income countries,” Professor Canfell said.
The latest study also highlighted the importance of continuing the cervical screening regime in Australia, which recently saw the biennial pap smear replaced by HPV screening every five years.