Economy
1.5 mn: That’s how many years Indian women will lose to cervical cancer by 2025
Summary
- ICMR said the government needs to increase the screening coverage of Indian women from a mere 2% currently to 70%.
New Delhi: The government’s apex medical research body has sounded the alarm on the looming burden of cervical cancer in India, saying there is an urgent need to scale up both screening and vaccination in order to arrest the disease.
It said Indian women are set to lose 1.5 million years of life—either due to early death or disability—by 2025 because of cervical cancer.
A study by the Indian Council Medical Research (ICMR) calculated the overall burden of cervical cancer using ‘disability adjusted life years’ (DALYs)—a tool that measures years lost not only to premature death but also to time lived in states of less than full health.
The commonly used tool gives a fuller picture of the impact of a disease, as death alone does not measure the extent of the disease’s burden.
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Using data from 2016, ICMR said 223 life years were lost per 100,000 women in that year. It then calculated the proportion to arrive at the projection of 1.5 million for 2025.
ICMR urged the government to widen the screening for the disease from a mere 2% of Indian women currently to 70%.
The alarming figures come against the backdrop of the government’s plan to shortly roll out human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination to prevent cervical cancer. It said that scaling up HPV vaccination with 90% coverage and two lifetime screenings can lead to the elimination of cervical cancer in India by 2070.
To conduct this study, the researchers examined the burden of cervical cancer in India for 2016 which was 223.8 DALYs per 100,000 women. They analysed data from various population-based cancer registries within the National Cancer Registry Programme network.
Their examination showed that Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh, Karnataka and Nagaland had a higher cervical cancer burden with DALYs exceeding 300 per 100,000 women. The findings of the study have now been published in BMC (Bio Medical Centre) public health journal.
It says Indian women are most vulnerable to cervical cancer between the ages of 50 and 74.
“The recent recommendation by the National Technical Advisory Group for Immunization to include HPV vaccination in the universal immunization programme for adolescent girls of age 9- 14 years, with a one-time catch-up, is a step forward in cervical cancer control in India. With the current 2% screening coverage, India has to improve the screening coverage by 35.0 times to achieve the target of 70% screening coverage. Scaling up HPV vaccination with 90% coverage and two lifetime screenings will lead to the elimination of cervical cancer in India by approximately 2070," it said.
Experts said the cancer registry reach is still limited to the bigger states of India.
“This data is important to understand the burden of a preventable cancer with vaccination and can be early detected with cost effective screening methods. There is a need of sustained efforts at national level and commitment at state level to adopt HPV vaccination, cervical cancer screening and treatment at cancer center, so that WHO’s cervical cancer elimination goals with a target of 90% vaccination, 70% screening and 90% treatment of cervical disease can be achieved," said Dr Abhishek Sankar, a professor of oncology at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi.
In 2022, there were an estimated 127, 526 cases and 79,906 deaths attributed to cervical cancer in India as per the World Health Organization’s Global Cancer Observatory data.
“HPV vaccine is the need of the hour. It has been shown to be effective in the National programmes running in many countries. Administering HPV vaccine to our girls is going to be very important for preventing cervical cancer. With high coverage, there will be added benefits of herd immunity also. This will help in reaching the goal of cervical cancer elimination set by WHO. It is a very preventable cancer and HPV vaccine is a powerful, safe and effective tool. No serious adverse events have been associated with this vaccine," said pProfessor Neerja Bhatla, former head of the department of obstetrics and gynaecology at AIIMS, Delhi.
Prof. Bhatla said the majority of women with cervical cancer are in the age group between 40-60 years of age in India, as per data from the cancer registry.
“However, a major vulnerable group is women living with HIV who need special attention. The best age to administer this vaccine is to girls 9-14 years old, as the younger they are the better is the immune response and protection," she said.
