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HPV at your cervix: The road to eliminating cervical cancer in Africa

February 1, 2024 Jive Media Africa

HPV at your Cervix: The road to eliminating cervical cancer in Africa

(The GIFT Webinar: Women up to know good episode 2)

While cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer globally, cases are clustered in low and middle-income countries (LMICs). In 2020, 342,000 women died of cervical cancer; 90% of these deaths occurred in LMICs. Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest regional incidence and mortality, and rates continue to rise. However, this trend is reversible.

As International HPV Awareness Day (4 March) approaches, GIFT invites you to attend episode two of Women up to Know Good:  HPV at Your Cervix, a webinar on cervical cancer prevention in Africa. Featuring leading female voices in public health across the continent, the dialogue aims to catalyse collective action in the fight against cervical cancer, a disease that claims more women’s lives in sub-Saharan Africa than any other cancer.

As human papillomavirus (HPV) infection is a factor in 95% of cervical cancer cases, the disease can be almost eliminated through comprehensive HPV vaccination coverage and cancer screening. Vaccinations are critical in sub-Saharan Africa particularly, where high HIV prevalence puts girls and women at greater risk for developing cervical cancer.

Despite resource constraints and other challenges, 23 African countries have introduced HPV vaccinations, and 34 now offer cervical cancer screening services. Nonetheless, there is much work to be done to reach the WHO goal of 90% of girls vaccinated by the age of 15.  In South Africa, a school-based vaccination programme has produced positive results; however, completion rates of the two-dose schedule has declined. A recently revised WHO recommendation of single-dose vaccination offers opportunities for expanding access, although more research is needed to determine whether single doses are optimal for those living with HIV.

Join us as we discuss how to accelerate efforts to prevent cervical cancer in African countries. The webinar will gather researchers and healthcare practitioners to identify ways to increase vaccination coverage public awareness and demand, for out-of-school youth, young women and those living with HIV.

Panellists

Professor Lynette Denny

Professor Denny is a gynaecologic oncologist and has been working in the field of cervical cancer prevention in collaboration with colleagues from Columbia University, New York since 1995.  They began their collaboration with the intention of evaluating alternative strategies for the prevention of cervical cancer in low resource settings.  Cervical cancer was and remains the most common cancer diagnosed among women living in poor countries due to the failure to either initiate or sustain cytology-based screening programmes.  The group pioneered the search for alternative protocols for the prevention of cervical cancer in community-based research sites in townships just outside of Cape Town.  Since then, Professor Denny has had extensive research experience in cervical cancer prevention, including three cross-sectional studies comparing different screening tests (such as HPV testing and VIA to cytology), a prophylactic HPV vaccine trial in HIV positive women and a therapeutic vaccine trial in HPV negative women.  Her team is currently engaged in a NCI (USA) funded trial evaluating screen and treat with the HPV Xpert Cepheid HPV test.  Professor Denny was appointed the director of the SA Medical Research Council Gynaecological Cancer Research Centre, with 5 years of guaranteed funding and is now in the next phase of the development of the Centre and have an additional 3 years of funding.

Professor Denny became head of Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology in 2013 and handed over the leadership of the Gynaecological Cancer Unit to Dr Nomonde Mbatani who was second in charge. Since April 2022, she has stepped down as HOD of OBGYN and was given the title of Professor of Special Projects, in the Department of OBGYN, University of Cape Town. Professor Denny formally retired 31st December 2023, and is now Emeritus Professor, Senior Scholar.

Dr Ruanne Barnabas

Dr Ruanne Barnabas is the Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and a South African physician-scientist.

Over the last 15 years, her research has focused on interventions for HIV and STI treatment and prevention. She is particularly interested in novel approaches that increase access to services. She led the Delivery Optimization for Antiretroviral therapy (DO ART) Study that evaluated the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of decentralized, community-based ART. Also, she leads work to increase access to HIV care, including testing lottery incentives and home delivery. She is the Principal Investigator of the KEN SHE Study to assess the impact of single-dose human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination in Kenya. Recently, her work has extended to COVID-19 prevention within households. Her work aims to identify effective and scalable HIV, HPV, and infectious disease treatment and prevention strategies to increase access across diverse communities and promote equity in health.

She serves as an advisor to the World Health Organization and UNAIDS. She was honoured as a Fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America in 2020.

Dr Zizipho Mbulawa

Dr Zizipho Mbulawa is a joint medical scientist at the National Health Laboratory Service Nelson Mandela Academic Hospital and Walter Sisulu University, Mthatha. She is a member of the South African Medical Research Council Gynaecological Cancer Research Centre and has expertise in the molecular epidemiology of Human papillomavirus (HPV). Her research has focused on the impact of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) co-infection on HPV infection, transmission, and natural history on women, adolescents, and heterosexual couples. She also focused on HPV and its associated diseases health education to the general community.

Dr Fezile Khumalo

Dr Fezile Khumalo has expertise in medical biochemistry, earned through her PhD from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, in collaboration with CSIR. Her research is deeply rooted in the development of immunoassays for infectious diseases, with a special focus on tuberculosis (TB) and sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Dr Khumalo’s mission is to translate biomarkers discovered and validated in Africa and other low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) into diagnostic technologies that can be commercialized for broader accessibility. The core of her work is in translating research innovations into tangible diagnostic solutions.