USAID Can Play a Lead Role in the Elimination of Cervical Cancer Forever

May 6, 2021

TogetHER has joined a group of 18 organizations calling on the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and its newly confirmed Administrator Samantha Power to continue to show leadership in global women’s health by championing efforts to eliminate cervical cancer worldwide. USAID’s strong track record of support in cervical cancer prevention should represent a stepping off point for ambitious new investments toward the first-ever elimination of a cancer.

Members and partners of TogetHER for Health recommend the following actions from Administrator Power as she embarks on her critical new role:

  1. Support the World Health Organization’s cervical cancer elimination strategy;
  2. Work quickly with USAID regional teams to implement rollback of the so-called global gag rule at the country level, freeing resources for organizations dedicated to providing women’s health without onerous ideological limitations that put women’s lives at risk;
  3. Sustain or increase investments in Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, enabling millions of young women and girls to receive the HPV vaccine to prevent cervical cancer later in life;
  4. Sustain or increase investments in the Go Further program under PEPFAR to screen and treat women living with HIV for cervical cancer using HPV testing as the primary screening method;
  5. Initiate a commitment to ensuring that HPV vaccination, screening, and treatment services are components of quality, rights-based, client-centered, integrated sexual and reproductive healthcare alongside contraceptive access and prevention, testing, and treatment for HIV, and other sexually transmitted infections;
  6. Utilize COVID-19 mitigation investments to improve global health infrastructure and lab capacity more broadly.

We look forward to working with USAID leadership to make cervical cancer elimination a reality. Click here to view the letter.

• TogetHER for Health
• American Cancer Society
• Basic Health International
• PATH
• Pathfinder International
• Population Services International
• Project Concern International, a Global Communities Partner
• AVAC
• Engender Health
• Global Focus on Cancer
• Go Doc Go
• Grounds for Health
• Haiti sans Cervical Cancer (HsCC)
• Human Rights Watch
• John Snow, Inc.
• Laura Crandall Brown Foundation
• The Lily Project
• MSI Reproductive Choices

Photo credit: “Convening of Women’s Saving Club” by USAID_IMAGES is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0