EUROPE, 20 January 2021 - On the occasion of Cervical Cancer Prevention week, eight parliamentarians and members of the EPF Executive Committee signed a joint letter to Commissioner Kyriakides, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety. The Parliamentarians called the upcoming European Union's 'Beating Cancer Plan' a "once in a generation opportunity to unite countries in a pan-national effort to eliminate HPV-related cancer as a public health problem across the region".
In 2018, there were almost 26,000 deaths attributable to cervical cancer in Europe and 2.7 million cancer cases across the 27 EU States was caused by HPV in 2020. As revealed by EPF's Cervical Cancer Prevention Policy Atlas, there is a clear divide between regions within the European Union, with western and northern Europe ranking higher in terms of policies than eastern and southern Europe. Today, only 11 countries in the European Union offer free national routine vaccination programmes for boys and girls and only 15 EU Member States have mature, population-based screening programmes. While providing accurate and evidence-based information about HPV and its prevention is the responsibility of the government, only 22 Member States have good or excellent governmental websites about HPV prevention.
The parliamentarians therefore called on Ms Kyriakides to include the following recommendations in the EUS's Beating Cancer Plan:
- Include free of charge HPV vaccination for boys and girls into routine state vaccination schedules
- Provide free mature population-based screening programmes which are the only way to reach the entire population and achieve results in saving women’s lives
- Provide citizens with reliable evidence-based information about HPV screening and vaccine and where to reach them
- Collaborate in better data collection for HPV screening and coverage rate
- Ensure resilient health systems with special focus on them being overall more adaptive to the crisis