Jeremy Miles MS, Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care
As part of the Senedd Health and Social Care Committee’s inquiry about gynaecological cancer, I committed to providing an update about progress towards meeting targets for HPV vaccination, cervical screening, and cervical cancer treatment.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has set a target of 90% uptake for HPV vaccination. Before the pandemic, take-up of the HPV vaccination – which helps prevent a range of cancers, including cervical cancer, and genital warts – was close to this target. However, take-up has fallen post-pandemic.
Health board vaccination teams have made significant efforts to increase uptake, including targeting schools where coverage is lower – more than 1,400 additional HPV vaccines were given in 2025. Public Health Wales (PHW) has developed a survey for young people and their parents to help identify views about vaccinations and the barriers to attending routine appointments. It has also developed a comprehensive communications plan highlighting the benefits of HPV vaccination. Further school-based catch-up exercises are planned over the next 12 months.
Cervical screening, which looks for high-risk strains of HPV, is an important preventative intervention. PHW continually looks for ways to improve uptake in the national screening programmes, particularly in groups where uptake is low. Through its Screening Equity Strategy, it aims to reduce screening inequalities by enabling those who are eligible for screening to have equal access and the opportunity to participate in screening.
Cervical Screening Wales is currently considering the model for at-home, self-collected screening samples. This will roll-out later this year and will be aimed at women who rarely or never take up their offer of screening.
At-home screening is designed to reduce barriers to participation in screening and enable those who currently have difficulty accessing screening to engage with the programme. It is hoped it will increase uptake in under-screened groups, reducing inequalities and support progress towards the WHO cervical cancer elimination targets by increasing cervical screening coverage.
The latest figures on cervical cancer incidence and mortality show the combination of screening and awareness is helping to reduce the number of new cases from an average of 164 per year in 2002-04 to an average of 149 in 2020-22. The incidence rate has also fallen from 10.8 to 9.4 per 100,000 people.
The number of deaths per year has fallen from an average of 61 (2002-04) to 54 (2002-22), and the European age standardised mortality rate per 100,000 people has fallen from 4.1 to 3.2 over the same period. These figures show long-term improvement in incidence and mortality for cervical cancer, although there is still more to do and we hope vaccination will prevent more cases of cervical cancer in the future.
Cervical cancer is classed as gynaecological cancer for the purposes of reporting the number of women who start first definitive treatment within 62-days. However, the NHS is working towards reporting performance against the 62-day target for the different types of gynaecological cancers by April 2027. The NHS will use the next 12 months to change clinical systems to enable health boards to accurately capture data about sub-cancer type for completed pathways of care.
Our approach to improving cancer treatment and survival includes a comprehensive set of actions, including prevention, early detection, and timely access to high-quality treatment.
We encourage everyone who is eligible to take up their offer of HPV vaccination or cervical screening. In the years ahead, continuing to improve access to treatment, vaccination and screening will improve outcomes for women throughout Wales.