World Immunization Week 2024

During this year’s World Immunization Week, the World Health Organization (WHO) celebrates 50 years of the Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) and the efforts to save and improve countless lives by protecting against vaccine-preventable diseases. Researchers from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) have been heavily involved in these efforts, working to develop vaccination programmes, to monitor their impact, and to adapt them for use in even the most resource-constrained countries.

Although cancer is a noncommunicable disease (a disease that you cannot catch from someone else), some cancer types are caused by infections or other communicable factors that can spread among people. Fortunately, vaccines exist that can protect against some of these infections, such as vaccines against human papillomavirus (HPV), which causes almost all cases of cervical cancer, and vaccines against hepatitis viruses, which can cause liver cancer.

IARC researchers have shown that a single dose of vaccine against HPV is enough to confer long-term protection against HPV, equivalent to the protection offered by two or even three doses. This means that countries can effectively protect twice or three times as many people with the same number of vaccines, making vaccination programmes a very efficient and attractive use of limited health budgets for policy-makers.

Countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, and, most recently, Brazil are switching to a one-dose strategy against HPV; Professor Nísia Trindade Lima, the Minister of Health of Brazil, made this announcement in early April 2024. IARC-led studies feature prominently in the technical guidance given to these governments by their vaccine advisory committees.

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In this video, Dr Iacopo Baussano, a scientist in the Early Detection, Prevention, and Infections Branch at IARC, explains how IARC’s research was instrumental to Brazil updating its recommendations. He also explains the scale of the problems of HPV and cervical cancer in Brazil and how this decision will make a difference.

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