Australia will become the first country to effectively eliminate cervical cancer if vaccination and screening rates are maintained, researchers say.
The disease could be eradicated as a public health issue nationally within 20 years, according to new modelling.
It is predicted to be classified as a “rare cancer” in Australia by 2022, when it should drop to less than six cases per 100,000 people.
Scientists attribute the progress to national prevention programmes.
In 2007, Australia became one of the first countries to introduce a Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccination scheme for girls. The programme was later extended to boys.
It complemented a national screening programme that began in 1991.
The new modelling was published by the Cancer Council New South Wales (NSW), a charity, in The Lancet Public Health Journal on Wednesday.
Cervical cancer is caused by “high-risk” types of HPV, a sexually transmitted infection. It is the fourth-most frequent cancer in women and has a high mortality rate globally, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Australia’s current annual cervical cancer rate stands at seven cases per 100,000 people, about half the global average.
The study predicted that annual cases in Australia would drop to four in 100,000 by 2035 – a potential elimination threshold, the researchers suggested.
The WHO has not yet established such a standard for when cervical cancer becomes so uncommon it is deemed eliminated.
“Regardless of what the [elimination] threshold is, it is likely Australia would be the first country to reach it given our current low rate of cervical cancer, and our strong prevention programmes,” Dr Megan Smith, a researcher from Cancer Council NSW told the BBC.
Last year, Australia replaced its routine screening standards for the cancer – a pap smear examination – with more sensitive HPV cervical screening tests.
Researchers have estimated that the switch to the new test, conducted only every five years, will reduce cancer rates by at least 20%.
According to the WHO, about nine in 10 deaths from cervical cancer happen in low and middle-income countries.
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Trump taxes: New York authorities examine president’s tax affairs
The New York State Tax Department has confirmed it is investigating claims by the New York Times that President Trump helped his parents dodge millions of dollars in taxes.
The paper has alleged that the president was involved in “dubious tax schemes during the 1990s, including instances of outright fraud”.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders called the story a “misleading attack.”
She said the transactions were signed off by the IRS “many decades ago.”
The president himself has not commented, but his lawyer Charles Harder said in a statement: “There was no fraud or tax evasion by anyone. The facts upon which The Times bases its false allegations are extremely inaccurate.”
Mr. Trump has repeatedly styled himself as a self-made billionaire who got little help from his wealthy father’s property empire.
But in a special investigation based on more than 100,000 pages of documents, the New York Times alleges that the president actually received the equivalent of $413m (£318m).
“By age 3, Mr. Trump was earning $200,000 a year in today’s dollars from his father’s empire,” it states. “He was a millionaire by age 8.”
The report claims Mr. Trump was getting the equivalent of $1m a year from his father shortly after he graduated from college.
That figure had risen to more than $5m by the time he was in his forties and fifties, it states.
The Times reports: “Much of this money came to Mr. Trump because he helped his parents dodge taxes. He and his siblings set up a sham corporation to disguise millions of dollars in gifts from their parents.”
The paper also alleges that the president “helped his father take improper tax deductions worth millions more”. It says he helped cut his parents’ tax bill through a strategy that undervalued their property assets by hundreds of millions of dollars.
Addressing the tax evasion claims, the president’s lawyer said: “President Trump had virtually no involvement whatsoever with these matters.” He said the affairs “were handled by other Trump family members who were not experts themselves”, and who had relied on tax professionals.
