In 2014, South Africa launched an HPV vaccination campaign targeting nine-year-old public schoolchildren in Grade 4. It involves delivering two doses of vaccine six months apart. Spotlight finds out how the campaign is going and what recent real-world HPV vaccine effectiveness data from the Uni.
A recent study published in
The Lancet medical journal found that women living with HIV made up an estimated 63.4% of new cervical cancer cases in South Africa in 2018 – a dramatically higher percentage than the global level of around 6%. The study also found that women living with HIV on average have a sixfold higher risk of developing cervical cancer than women who are not living with HIV.
“In absolute terms,” the authors wrote, “most women with cervical cancer living with HIV were from South Africa.”
Of the estimated 33,000 new cases of cervical cancer in women living with HIV in 2018, around 8,200 were in South Africa. In total, including women who are not living with HIV, it is estimated there were around 570,000 new cervical cancer cases worldwide in 2018.
The Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership (GARDP) has launched a stage-three trial of zoliflodacin, a potential new antibiotic to treat gonorrhoea, in South Africa as well as the United States, the Netherlands and Thailand.
The World Health Organisation started the GARDP in 2016. It is a non-profit organisation focused on developing new treatments for infections which have become resistant to available treatments. It says its mission is to produce new medicines which are accessible and affordable to all who need them.
Zoliflodacin is being trialled at three sites in South Africa – the Wits Reproductive Health and HIV Institute based at the Hillbrow Health Precinct in Johannesburg, and two South African Medical Research Council sites at Tongaat and Botha’s Hill in KwaZulu-Natal.