KEY MESSAGES
Rwanda has a high cervical cancer incidence rate of 28.2/100,000 women Screening rate is low, with only 18% coverage against the target of 70% Increasing the number of women screened for cervical cancer will have about 160,164 women with precancerous lesions treated and reduce the incidence of cancer cases.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
Globally, more than 604,127 new cervical cancer cases and 341,831 deaths have been reported by Globocan in 2020 [1], and 70-90% occurred in Low-Middle Income Countries (LMICs) with observed low screening rates, especially in sub- Saharan countries [2,3]. Rwanda has a high cervical incidence rate of 28.2/100,000 women (1229 new cases per year) and a mortality rate of 20.1/100,000 (829 deaths per year) observed in 2020 (Figure 1) [4,5]. However, cervical cancer can largely be prevented through the vaccination of young girls against HPV and screen-and-treat programs for pre-cancerous lesions.
Rwanda is the first country in Africa to vaccinate about 93 % of its target population (girls aged below 15) against HPV [6].
