Cervical cancer remains one of the most preventable yet deadliest cancers affecting Filipino women, and the pandemic disrupted one of the country’s main protections against it.
According to the 2023 Philippines fact sheet of the ICO/IARC Information Centre on HPV and Cancer, an estimated 7,897 women in the Philippines are diagnosed with cervical cancer each year, and about 4,052 die from the disease.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) notes in its December 2025 cervical cancer fact sheet that cervical cancer is largely preventable through HPV vaccination and regular screening. Vaccination is recommended for girls aged 9 to 14, ideally before exposure to the virus.
In the Philippines, however, the school-based system designed to reach girls at this age was suspended during the COVID-19 pandemic and was only formally restored in 2024.
Consequently, public health officials now face a difficult question: how many girls were never reached in time?
Why Timing Matters
The concern is not abstract.
Under the WHO Cervical Cancer Elimination Initiative, countries are encouraged to meet the 90-70-90 targets:
- 90% of girls fully vaccinated with HPV vaccine by age 15
- 70% of women screened by ages 35 and 45 using a high-performance test
- 90% of women with precancer or invasive disease treated
According to WHO, reaching these thresholds can place countries on the path to eliminating cervical cancer as a public health problem.
HPV vaccination is particularly time-sensitive because it is most effective before exposure to infection. Screening, meanwhile, is meant to detect precancerous changes before disease advances.
When a school-based vaccination program stalls in a country that already struggles with screening coverage, the result is not simply a missed appointment. It becomes a widened prevention gap.
The School-Based System Was Central Before COVID-19
Before the pandemic, the Philippines had already begun using schools as the most practical way to reach girls in the target age group.
A 2022 peer-reviewed review titled “Current Status of Human Papillomavirus Infection and Cervical Cancer in the Philippines” notes that HPV vaccination was integrated into the Department of Health National Immunization Program in 2015, followed by a school-based pilot program in 2017.
Schools provided a predictable setting for consent, coordination, and follow-up.
However, once face-to-face classes were suspended, the delivery system collapsed with them.
According to the Department of Education, Bakuna Eskwela, which includes HPV vaccination, was relaunched in October 2024 after a four-year interruption caused by pandemic restrictions. The program marked a return from community-based catch-up efforts to the original school-based approach.
Recovery Began From a Weak Baseline
The pandemic did not interrupt a high-coverage HPV program. It interrupted one that was already far below global targets.
According to the WHO 2021 cervical cancer country profile for the Philippines, only 23% of the target population received a first HPV dose in 2020, while just 5% completed the final dose.
The same profile indicated that fewer than one in ten girls in the primary target cohort had completed vaccination that year.
Meanwhile, the 2023 ICO/IARC Philippines fact sheet estimated first-dose coverage at about 4% and final-dose coverage at 0% in 2021.
Although these figures come from different reporting periods and estimation methods, they point in the same direction: HPV vaccine coverage in the Philippines remained extremely low throughout the pandemic period.
Global Progress Resumed, but the Philippines Still Has Catching Up to Do
Globally, HPV vaccination coverage has begun to recover, though it remains far from elimination targets.
According to the WHO and UNICEF July 2025 immunization update, 31% of eligible adolescent girls worldwide received at least one HPV vaccine dose in 2024, up from 17% in 2019 but still far below the 90% goal.
Meanwhile, a 2025 descriptive study based on WHO estimates reported that 147 countries had introduced HPV vaccination into national immunization schedules by 2024, and that global coverage in the primary target cohort had improved after pandemic lows.
The Philippines, however, entered the pandemic from a weaker starting point than many countries and has had to rebuild vaccination programs while also restoring public confidence in immunization.
A January 2025 joint release from DOH, WHO, and UNICEF noted that the number of zero-dose children in the Philippines fell from about 1 million in 2021 to 163,000 in 2023, while Bakuna Eskwela, including HPV vaccination, was reinstated in 2024.
Missed Opportunities Are Not Only About Fear
Recent evidence suggests that post-pandemic challenges involve not only awareness but also delivery systems.
According to UNICEF’s 2024 report Gender and Immunization in the Philippines, women and girls face unique barriers to vaccination both as caregivers and as patients. These barriers include:
- Vaccine shortages
- Limited vaccination sites
- Financial constraints
- Weak health infrastructure in underserved areas
The report also notes that gender norms can influence health-seeking behavior and household decision-making.
Even when adolescent girls are willing to be vaccinated, they may have limited authority to influence family decisions.
Consequently, recovery is not only about reopening schools. It requires ensuring that vaccines, schedules, consent pathways, and community support align for each eligible girl.
READ: Cervical Cancer Prevention, Early Detection, and Survivorship – A Comprehensive Guide
Conservative Norms Still Shape HPV Decisions
Cultural hesitation remains part of the story.
According to UNICEF’s 2024 Gender Analysis of Adolescent Health in East Asia, some conservative communities in the Philippines worry that HPV vaccination may encourage premarital sexual activity.
These perceptions can slow consent and weaken demand for vaccination.
Nevertheless, the same research shows that trust can be built through credible community messengers.
UNICEF’s Philippines gender report found that female health workers are widely trusted by women and girls, while the January 2025 DOH-WHO-UNICEF update noted that Muslim religious leaders in BARMM’s Special Geographic Areas actively promoted immunization campaigns.
In other words, resistance exists, but it is not fixed.
Screening Remains the Other Weak Line of Defense
Vaccination is only one part of cervical cancer prevention. Screening is the other, and it remains limited in the Philippines.
The WHO 2021 cervical cancer country profile reports that the national screening strategy relies largely on visual inspection with acetic acid (VIA) for women aged 25 to 55.
Estimated coverage in 2019 was only about 1% of women ever screened or screened in recent years.
More recent data suggest improvement, but still not enough.
A 2024 study titled “Factors Influencing Cervical Cancer Screening Uptake among Reproductive-Aged Filipino Women,” based on the 2022 National Demographic and Health Survey, found that only about 10% of women surveyed had undergone cervical cancer screening.
Screening was significantly more common among women who were older, wealthier, more educated, and employed, highlighting persistent inequality in access.
In Rural Provinces, Access Is the Bigger Barrier
Public discussion often focuses on Pap smears, but the larger challenge in rural areas is access to any reliable screening at all.
According to the 2022 review Breast and Cervical Cancer Screening in the Philippines, cytologic screening facilities and cytopathologists remain concentrated in the National Capital Region.
This centralization is one reason the national program relies heavily on VIA rather than cytology-based screening such as Pap smears.
The review also reported that fewer than one in ten Filipino women had been screened in the previous five years, citing geographic disparities, out-of-pocket costs, and centralized health infrastructure as key barriers.
A 2020 clinical audit in Santo Tomas, Laguna, published in the Journal of Global Health Reports, further illustrates the gap. Among 68 women with abnormal screening results, three were diagnosed with cervical cancer, and 67% of participants had never previously been screened.
The Virus Did Not Pause During Recovery
While vaccination and screening programs struggled to recover, HPV itself continued circulating.
A 2025 study published in the Journal of Virus Eradication examined 1,194 women from two Philippine communities and reported an overall high-risk HPV prevalence of 11.22%.
Women living in urban areas had 1.62 times higher odds of infection than those in rural communities.
The study also found that each additional year of delayed vaginal sexual debut reduced infection risk by about 7%.
The most common high-risk genotypes detected were HPV-52, HPV-16, and HPV-68.
These findings highlight a difficult reality: public health systems may recover slowly, but viruses do not wait for systems to stabilize.
The Missed Cohort Can Still Be Reached
The most urgent question now is whether girls who missed vaccination during the pandemic can still be protected.
According to the April 2025 IARC cervical cancer elimination planning brief for the Philippines, extending catch-up vaccination to girls aged 10 to 18 who missed vaccination between 2020 and 2024 could allow the country to eliminate cervical cancer by 2063.
The same modeling suggests that this strategy could save 946,952 lives between 2020 and 2120, about 9,955 more lives than a catch-up campaign limited to girls aged 14 and below.
Thus, the pandemic cohort is not beyond reach. The evidence suggests something more urgent and practical: a large-scale catch-up campaign could still reshape the country’s future disease burden.
The Final Measure Is Whether Girls Are Reached on Time
So are Filipino girls missing the protection window?
Based on the available evidence, some likely did or came dangerously close.
The Philippines entered the pandemic with low HPV vaccine coverage, lost four years of regular school-based delivery, and still faces limited cervical screening coverage, particularly in poorer and underserved communities.
Nevertheless, the science remains clear.
According to WHO, cervical cancer is largely preventable. And according to IARC’s elimination model, broader catch-up vaccination could still save hundreds of thousands of lives over the coming decades.
The real test now is not whether science is clear.
It is whether post-pandemic recovery can move fast enough and far enough to reach the girls who were most likely to be missed when schools closed and prevention briefly fell silent.
References:
Department of Education. (2024, October 7). DepEd, DOH launch Bakuna Eskwela to revive school-based immunization against preventable diseases. https://www.deped.gov.ph/2024/10/07/deped-doh-launch-bakuna-eskwela-to-revive-school-based-immunization-against-preventable-diseases/
Department of Health, United Nations Children’s Fund, & World Health Organization. (2025, January 30). DOH, UNICEF, WHO highlight key strategies to achieve 95% child immunization in the Philippines. https://www.who.int/philippines/news/detail/30-01-2025-doh–unicef–who-highlight-key-strategies-to-achieve-95–child-immunization-in-the-philippines
Hidalgo, V. (2026, March 9). Philippines pushes data-driven strategy for HPV vaccination drive. InsiderPH. https://insiderph.com/philippines-pushes-data-driven-strategy-for-hpv-vaccination-drive
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