Botswana is a middle-income country in Southern Africa that has invested
heavily to increase access to high-quality health services, emphasizing prevention,
care and treatment especially for women and youth. This includes scaling up
innovative methods to prevent HIV (thereby addressing the challenge of one of
the highest HIV prevalence rates in the world) and developing systems to meet
emerging health needs in non-communicable disease prevention and care.
Among the critical areas of focus is cervical cancer prevention and treatment.
Cervical cancer is the most common cancer among women of all ages in
Botswana and the leading cause of cancer-related deaths among women. To
respond to the National Cervical Cancer Prevention Programme (NCCPP)
estimate of a 20% increase by 2025 in incidence and mortality due to cervical
cancer in women under 65, there is a pressing need to build responsive,
high-quality services that detect and treat cervical cancer early. This includes
increasing knowledge and awareness and expanding access to vaccinations for the
human papillomavirus (HPV), which can lead to cervical cancer.