TWO multinational drugmakers are teaming up with global health groups to protect millions of girls in the world's poorest countries from deadly cervical cancer.
Starting with pilot programs in eight Asian and African nations, the project aims to inoculate more than 30 million girls in more than 40 countries by 2020.
The plan was announced on Thursday by the GAVI Alliance, a public-private partnership that's worked with drugmakers to deliver affordable vaccines to poor countries to treat childhood illnesses that are big killers.
"This is a transformational moment for the health of women and girls across the world," said Dr Seth Berkley, CEO of GAVI, which is short for Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation.
"A vast gap currently exists between girls in rich and poor countries. With GAVI's programs we can begin to bridge that gap so that all girls can be protected against cervical cancer no matter where they are born," he said in a statement.
Drugmakers Merck & Co and GlaxoSmithKline initially will provide 2.4 million doses of their vaccines against cancer-causing human papilloma virus.
Merck will supply its Gardasil for $US4.50 ($A4.45) per dose, and Glaxo its Cervarix for $US4.60 per dose. In the US, the shots cost well over $US100 apiece, and a three-dose series over six months is required.
The vaccines protect against the strains of human papilloma virus, or HPV, that most commonly cause cancer.
The virus, transmitted during sex, causes cervical cancer as well as vaginal, vulvar, anal and oral cancers. The vaccines prevent roughly 70 per cent of those cancers.
In developed countries, older girls and women routinely get Pap tests to check for cervical cancer or signs of precancerous changes in cervical tissue and few people die.
Increasingly, young girls and now boys as well are vaccinated, starting as young as age 9.
Not so in poor countries.
"They don't have the benefit of screening to catch cancer early, when it can still be treated," said Dr Julie L Gerberding, president of Merck Vaccines.
As a result, 85 per cent of the 275,000 women killed by cervical cancer each year live in poor countries, where HPV is most prevalent.
The GAVI project will begin "demonstration projects" administering the vaccines to girls aged 9 to 13, starting in Kenya as early as this month. Then it will be expanded to Ghana, Laos, Madagascar, Malawi, Niger, Sierra Leone and Tanzania.
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