UK close to nearly eliminating cervical cancer, the U.S. not so much

More than 85 percent of UK teenage girls have been vaccinated with the HPV vaccine. The result: cervical cancers could be reduced to just 50 cancers in the whole of the U.K. for women under 30, says researcher Peter Sasieni of King’s College London.

“It’s an incredible achievement to have, first of all, got rates that high among girls 12 to 13 years old,” said Allison Kempe, a pediatrics professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. Only 59 percent of the girls in the United States have been vaccinated. “I’m very, very disturbed that we can’t do better in this country.”

See “The U.K. is on its way to eliminating cervical cancer. Here’s why the U.S. isn’t close” by Angus Chen on the Stat website (November 9, 2021)