Sweden is trying to become the world's first country to eliminate HPV. Here's how

The Nordic country's ambitious timeline relies on high vaccination uptake and efficient mass screening and follow-up treatment.

Transcript

00:00We are systematically asking all women born in 1994-1999 to come in for

00:29a shot of a most recent updated vaccine together with an HPV screening test at

00:37the same time, which is the first and most important part of the Swedish

00:45elimination project and that is to stop the circulation of HPV in the population.

00:59It shows that when they are offered it, very close to their day-to-day life, close to the

01:22universities, their workplaces, where they go out in the evening, they are willing to

01:28take the vaccine, but they live busy lives.

01:40After we don't have any more new infections, we will systematically and on a massive scale

01:48be offering the population HPV self-sampling to rapid and massive screening to find any

01:57possible precursors of this cancer.

02:00This is expected to be finished by 2027 and if successful, this will be the date when

02:10we have eliminated cervical cancer from Sweden.

02:24I think that cancer is very difficult to eliminate.

02:28This would be one of the first options where we can really eliminate the form of cancer

02:37and I think that when we have very effective tools to do this, we have an ethical requirement

02:45to actually use it to ensure that we don't have more cancer than necessary.