LONDON - A global vaccines group says it is working to buy shots to protect up to 2 million women and young girls in poor countries from cervical cancer.
After a meeting in Bangladesh this week, the GAVI alliance said women and young girls in nine developing countries might be immunized against the human papillomavirus, or HPV, which causes cervical cancer, by 2015.
But the group says buying the vaccines depends on whether it can negotiate a reasonable price from manufacturers and whether countries can prove they can actually deliver the shots.
The GAVI alliance includes the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the vaccine industry and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, among others. HPV causes about 275,000 cervical cancer deaths every year, of which 88 per cent occur in poor countries.
