7 - Gasoline on the Fire: When HIV Meets HPV

Summary

The potency of a vaccine against cancer-causing HPV – and the body’s ability to clear it – offers many women a fighting chance. But extinguishing this source of cervical cancer overlooks another sexually transmitted virus that’s been raging around the globe for decades: the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The lethal effects of HPV mixed with HIV can be like setting gasoline on fire. HPV infections in HIV-positive women last longer, progress more quickly, recur more frequently, and are harder to eradicate. Cervical cancer in HIV-positive women – many of them in lower-income countries – strikes younger, is more aggressive, and harder to cure. Women with HIV are six times more likely to die of cervical cancer. They face a particular threat in Africa, home to two-thirds of the world’s 40 million HIV cases. Without a concerted effort to overcome the dual stigma of HIV and HPV through education, appropriate medical care to all persons with cervixes, and a means to address the vulnerability of the continent’s child brides, Africa will remain at the core of the HIV-HPV inferno – undermining the quest for global cervical cancer elimination.