HPV Vaccinations Raise Hope of Less Cervical Cancer

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The World Health Organization says East Africa has the highest rate of cervical cancer in the world.  In October, Kenya launched a mass vaccination of girls against the human papillomavirus (HPV), which can lead to cervical cancer.  The vaccine is being welcomed by HPV patients, who hope their children will be protected better than they were.

Thirty-year-old Jacinta Agunja tested positive in 2016 for one of the human papillomaviruses (HPV) that leads to cervical cancer.

After two years of intensive and expensive treatment, she was free of HPV and did not get cancer. 

Agunja hopes Kenya’s mass vaccination of girls, launched in October, will prevent her 10-year-old daughter from also getting the virus.

"That vaccine, I need it to help my daughter and other women who are not sexually active now," said Agunja. "When they become sexually active, they will be already protected so that they cannot go through what I went through, because women in informal settlement(s) cannot afford that much."

Kenya is offering the free HPV vaccine as part of the county’s routine immunization schedule to 10-year-old girls.