HPV and Cervical Cancer Screening
The World Health Organization (WHO) Information Centre on HPV and Cervical Cancer states the incidence of cervical cancer in Nepal is 24.2 per 100,000, making Nepal a country with one of the highest rates of cervical cancer in the world. Although Nepal currently suffers from a heavy burden of cervical cancer, there is no official WHO estimate of the distribution of HPV in Nepal. Previous studies estimate the prevalence of high-risk HPV types in other South Asian countries to be as high as 14% in the general adult population. However, data on high-risk HPV types are not yet available for the general population of Nepal and there is no national cancer registry. In an effort to learn more about the Nepali epidemic of HPV, Nepal Fertility Care Center in collaboration with investigators at the School of Public Health University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) are currently investigating the prevalence of HPV in different regions and populations in Nepal. The information gained through these data will help clinicians to better understand the unique risk factors underlying HPV infection in Nepali women, which in turn, will help facilitate the understanding of how HPV is disseminated throughout Nepal’s 29 million citizens.
