Women living with HIV are more likely to develop persistent HPV infections and have a 4–5 times greater risk of developing cervical cancer than HIV-negative women. The human papillomavirus (HPV) causes diseases that range from benign lesions to invasive cancers. In 2012, 528 000 new cases of cervical cancer were diagnosed, and 266 000 women died of the disease, nearly 90% of them in low- and middle-income countries.
Cervical cancer occurs worldwide and is the second most common cancer in women living in low-and-middle countries (LMIC). The highest incidence rates are found in Central and South America, East Africa, South and South-East Asia, and the Western Pacific. . If detected and treated early, cervical cancer is largely preventable and curable. Over the past three decades, cervical cancer rates have fallen in most of the developed world, largely as a result of screening and treatment programmes. Increased efforts are increasingly being undertaken in LMICs to decrease illness and death due to this preventable disease by introducing measures such as national HPV vaccination programmes in pre-adolescent females.
To learn more about HIV, HPV and cervical cancer please read UNAIDS report published in 2016 titled “HPV, HIV and cervical cancer: Leveraging synergies to save women’s lives.”
To learn more about the state-of-the-art of cervical cancer prevention in lower-resourced settings consult the new supplement to the International Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics here.
And if you are attending the International AIDS Society Conference 2017 in Paris there is a session on the same topic.