Doctors say that improving HPV vaccination rates through carefully designed and funded programmes should be prioritised as a strategy to reduce cervical cancer incidence in LMIC. The gold standard for the diagnosis of both cervical dysplasia and invasive cancer is the histopathologic examination of biopsied specimens to identify premalignant and malignant conditions of the cervix.

Dr Ayyappan, surgical oncology, Apollo Cancer Center, says that in high-resource settings, the standard of care for cervical cancer screening, includes cervical cytology and/or high-risk HPV DNA or RNA testing, as most of the cervical cancer is caused by infection with HPV.

“Innovations in digital cytology and HPV testing could increase access to standard-of-care practices in low-resource settings, although the technical complexity, infrastructure requirements and cost are significant barriers. Newer optical technologies may allow for automated visual evaluation, reducing the need for extensively trained personnel and therefore more easily scaling in low-resource settings,” he said.

He added that technologies for the self-collection of cervical samples have previously been reviewed and self-sampling could help remove barriers to HPV screening.