Cervical cancer can be eliminated. Alabama is leading the way.

livemint.com:

Doctors are rallying around an audacious goal: eliminating a cancer for the first time. Cervical cancer rates in the U.S. have dropped by more than half since the 1970s.

Pap tests enable doctors to purge precancerous cells, and a vaccine approved in 2006 has protected a generation of women against human papillomavirus, a sexually transmitted infection that causes more than 90% of cervical cancers. With this evidence that the disease is preventable, groups that have worked for decades to end polio and malaria are turning to cervical cancer, plotting to take cases down to null. The World Health Organization is urging countries to boost vaccination, screening and treatment.

Doctors in the U.S. are working on a national plan. “We can eliminate a cancer for the first time ever," said Debbie Saslow, a former American Cancer Society official who recently went to work for Merck, maker of the HPV vaccine Gardasil 9, which is the only one distributed in the U.S.

Now starts the last mile: targeting stubborn pockets of resistance and inadequate access to care that still result in deaths. HPV vaccination rates in the U.S. lag behind those for other shots.

Screening rates also have fallen, and some women who do get screened and have abnormal results don’t return for treatment. Cervical-cancer cases among women 30-44 rose nearly 2% annually from 2012-2019. Some 4,300 women will die of the disease in the U.S.

this year. A proving ground for the elimination drive is Alabama, which has the nation’s fourth-highest cervical-cancer rate and worse numbers for Black women and women in rural areas. Health officials and doctors are aiming to wipe out cervical cancer in the state in a decade.