Ten years of schoolyard vaccinations just cut South Africa's riskiest HPV infections by 83%

In 2014, South Africa began offering the HPV vaccine to fourth-grade girls in public schools, and about 87% signed up in the first year. A decade on, researchers running the HOPE study — published in The Lancet Global Health — compared 2,357 girls aged 17-18 who were old enough to have been vaccinated with those who just missed out. Infections with HPV types 16 and 18, which cause most cervical cancers, fell by 83%: from about one in five girls to roughly three in a hundred. Among girls living with HIV, who face the highest risk, infections fell from 29% to 4%. Even unvaccinated girls were protected, because the virus now circulates so much less.

SDG 3 · Good health and well-being — Mechanism: institutional program