President Joe Biden’s cancer moonshot is expanding abroad. How’s that? Biden announced a collaboration between the United States, Australia, India and Japan to fight cervical cancer in the Indo-Pacific at a summit in Delaware on Saturday. Why it matters: Cervical cancer, caused by human papillomavirus infection, is the fourth most common cancer in women globally, killing an estimated 350,000 in 2022, according to the World Health Organization. In the Indo-Pacific, cervical cancer is the third leading cause of death in women. The disease is also largely preventable due to the availability of a nearly 100-percent-effective vaccine and is highly treatable when detected early. But, partly because of limited resources and health care access, fewer than 1 in 10 women in the Indo-Pacific region have completed the three-course vaccine and less than 10 percent have recently been screened. The plan: The U.S., Australia, India and Japan pledged to work together to improve health infrastructure, expand research collaboration, build data systems and strengthen cancer prevention, detection, treatment and care efforts. In addition to countries’ individual promises, the group plans to: — Continue to support Gavi, a public-private global health vaccine partnership, to improve HPV vaccine coverage in the Indo-Pacific, with the U.S. pledging $1.58 billion over five years. — Reduce the cost of cervical cancer screenings by working with the United Nations to buy HPV diagnostic tests in bulk. — Work with the International Atomic Energy Agency to improve access to better medical imaging and radiation therapy. Big picture: The collaboration feeds into Biden’s domestic cancer moonshot initiative, which aims to reduce the cancer death rate by half over 25 years.
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