HPV infection is common in women and also the leading cause of cervical cancer. Researchers aimed to evaluate the population impact and cost-effectiveness of strategies that combined cervical cancer screening and HPV schoolgirl vaccination for Chinese women based on a dynamic compartmental model.

Researchers assessed the effectiveness of interventions by comparing modeled scenarios to the status quo. A three-year cervical cancer screening program remained at a 20% coverage and without a universal HPV vaccination program. Our study demonstrated that increasing screening coverage from 20% to 50% would reduce the HR-HPV prevalence to 5.4%. A universal schoolgirl vaccination program using the qHPV with a range of 50% would reduce the majority to 2.9% by 2069. Scaling up the cervical screening coverage to 50% will prevent 16,012 DALYs per year, with an ICER of US$ 10,958.

The qHPV vaccine requires at least a 50% price reduction to be cost-effective. Vaccinating schoolgirls will result in a significant population health benefit in the long term. Still, such a universal HPV vaccination program can only be cost-effective with a substantial price reduction.

Reference: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21645515.2020.1832835

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