Cervical cancer elimination initiative updates

Dear friends and colleagues,

The end of the year is a time to take stock and to start preparing for the road ahead. This is a good time to reach out to you, our partners across the world, to express gratitude for the support you have provided to the cervical cancer elimination core team at WHO. Without your unwavering commitment and support, our work would be more challenging.

This time is also an opportunity to provide you with an update on where we are and to share our roadmap for the short term.

What we have achieved in 2019

In 2019, we collectively focused on getting the Draft Global Strategy for the Elimination of Cervical Cancer ready for discussion by WHO’s governing bodies in 2020. The multidisciplinary team of experts across all levels of the Organization with your support and the important work done by the various Working Groups has been able to deliver on the request from the Executive Board to “…develop, in consultation with Member States and other relevant stakeholders, a draft global strategy to accelerate cervical cancer elimination, with clear goals and targets for the period 2020–2030, for consideration by the Seventy-third World Health Assembly, through the Executive Board at its 146th session."

With your support and engagement, we have successfully completed consultations, meetings, discussions and presentation across countries spanning all WHO regions. We took into account every comment and piece of feedback that we received from a variety of countries through the open web consultation.

Expert Advisory Group & Draft Global Strategy

During this year, we also launched a public open call for experts. Following an open call, the DG`s Expert Advisory Group was established. The Experts Group held its first meeting on August 26 and 27^th to discuss a wide range of issues pertaining to the elimination of cervical cancer.

• The Draft Global Strategy is now available.
• Click here to see the timeline.

Once endorsed by the WHA, this Draft Global Strategy will be the blueprint to guide implementation across the six regions of WHO. We will be calling on you to continue to support this work as it evolves over the next 10 years. We are all looking forward to the developments in the field of HPV screening and testing; these will leapfrog us into the future.

The research community continues to be a beacon of hope and we are proud to have such expertise to guide our normative work.

Reaching milestones

• publication of the WHO Guidelines for the use of Thermal Ablation for Cervical Precancer Lesions,
• the Technology Landscape by UNITAID,
• prequalification of a third HPV test,
• and significant progress in the number of countries who have introduced HPV vaccinations into their national schedules.

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2020: An exciting year ahead

The Draft Global Strategy is in the agenda for the discussion by the 146th Executive Board (3-8 February 2020) with a view to be presented for approval during May’s World Health Assembly (WHA73).

New website

Join our Advocacy and Communications group

We very much count on you, your support and your reach to work with us and share our ambitious goals. We can only be successful in implementing the strategy if we partner effectively not only technically but also on our advocacy and communications – reaching across sectors and across stakeholders. Your engagement is critical. So in addition to regular information updates such as this one, we want to extend an invitation to our advocacy and communication experts to join an Advocacy and Communications group, which will be a virtual forum of partners convened regularly to build on each other’s reach and platforms to support the goals of the elimination Strategy. More such networks will evolve as we move forward.

Together we want share experiences, knowledge and success stories, and forge partnerships that can effectively support work already happening in countries and align and accelerate progress towards the global goals of the Strategy.

If you would like to sign up for this group, please send us a message.

Thank you!

On behalf of WHO, let me thank you once again for your continued commitment, unwavering support, energy and encouragement towards eliminating cervical cancer. Please continue reading below for more information and links.

Please share this with others who might be interested, and let’s start to grow our community! 

• Sign up for our newsletter.
• You can also follow me on Twitter at @DrNonoSimelela.

We wish you all a very We wish you all a happy holiday season, and look forward to working with you in 2020.

Warm regards,

Dr Nono Simelela
Special Adviser to the Director-General, Strategic Programmatic Priorities, WHO

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News

WHO Director-General hosts a group of experts for the elimination of cervical cancer as a global health problem

Major milestone reached as 100 countries have introduced HPV vaccine into national schedules

From IARC: New study provides baseline to measure impact of cervical cancer elimination objectives
 From the countries: Kenya takes vital step against cervical cancer and introduces HPV vaccine into routine immunization

20 million children miss out on lifesaving vaccines in 2018

From the regions: Accelerate efforts to eliminate cervical cancer, WHO tells South-East Asia Region

Publications

From The Lancet Global Health: Estimates of incidence and mortality of cervical cancer in 2018: a worldwide analysis. Published online 5 December 2019

Methodology to calculate HPV Vaccine Coverage in the Region of the Americas

Progress and Challenges with Achieving Universal Immunization Coverage: 2018 WHO/UNICEF Estimates of National Immunization Coverage (including HPV vaccination)
– July 2019