HPV vaccination impact in South Africa: evidence and next steps

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Scaling up human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination is fundamental to South Africa's cervical cancer elimination agenda, particularly in the context of the world's largest HIV epidemic. School-based HPV vaccination represented a major policy achievement; however, sustained programme confidence requires real-world evidence that vaccination reduces oncogenic HPV prevalence across heterogeneous immune profiles and health-system contexts. Updated data on HPV prevalence among young women, stratified by HIV status, are therefore essential for tracking progress towards elimination.