For the first time since records began, no woman aged 20–24 died from cervical cancer in England over a five-year period. The reason was a vaccine given to schoolgirls nearly two decades earlier. A recent study in The Lancet, linking HPV vaccination records from 2008–18 with mortality data through 2024, found no cervical cancer deaths among women in the first cohorts offered the vaccine. Screening participation had actually declined in this generation, making vaccination the only plausible explanation.

England is not alone. Last year, Public Health Scotland reported that among women vaccinated at ages 12–13, no case of invasive cervical cancer had been detected after up to 16 years of follow-up. Older, unvaccinated women in Britain continue to develop cervical cancer and die from it. Among women vaccinated in adolescence, however, the disease has effectively disappeared.

Meanwhile, Australia introduced HPV vaccination in 2007, reached coverage above 80%, and replaced Pap smears with primary HPV testing in 2017. Cervical cancer incidence fell to 6.3 cases per 100,000 women by 2021, and for the first time since national records began in 1982, no woman under 25 was diagnosed with the disease. Australia is projected to become the world's first country to eliminate cervical cancer as a public health problem, reducing........

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