Rwanda–Sweden Partnership Advances Cervical Cancer Elimination through concomitant vaccination and screening in adult women

The Rwanda Biomedical Centre received 200,000 HPV vaccines from MSD to support a clinical trial supervised by Professor Joakim Dillner of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, leading the “Even Faster Model in Sweden”. The initiative builds on Sweden’s experience in accelerating the elimination of HPV infections and cervical cancer, bringing that expertise to bear in Rwanda through a model of concomitant HPV vaccination and HPV screening.

The trial aims to evaluate whether organized, concomitant HPV vaccination and HPV screening, offered to women aged 23-29 years, will result in a more rapid elimination of HPV infections in the target districts in Rwanda. It targets young women aged 23 to 29 years — a group that falls between two critical interventions: too old to have been optimally vaccinated during adolescence, yet not yet eligible for Rwanda’s national cervical cancer screening programme, which targets women aged 30 to 49. By reaching this underserved age group with both vaccination and screening simultaneously, the trial aims to reduce HPV prevalence and close a significant gap in Rwanda’s path toward cervical cancer elimination.

The trial is being conducted across four districts — Gicumbi, Kayonza, Nyarugenge, and Karongi — with the remaining districts serving as a comparison group and targets a total of 100,000 women. To date, 48,000 women have received the vaccine and been screened for cervical cancer, marking meaningful early progress toward that goal.