HPV vaccine introduction in Pakistan: a strategic opportunity for multisectoral alliance

Pakistan has achieved a major public health milestone with the rollout of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine in September 2025. This has been a long-awaited intervention for cervical cancer prevention, with an FDA-approved vaccine since 2006 that has been successfully rolled out in 144 countries.1,2 Globally, approximately 662,301 women were diagnosed with cervical cancer, and 348,874 died from the disease in 2022.3 In Pakistan, there were 5008 women diagnosed with cervical cancer, and 3197 lost their lives (Globocan 2022).