The international health group PATH has received an infusion of cash from Microsoft's Bill Gates to support the launch of a program that will provide the new cervical cancer vaccines to women in poor countries. With a $27.8 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, PATH will begin in India, Peru, Uganda and Vietnam. Of the 250,000 women who die from cervical cancer each year, most of them live in the world's poorest countries. The sexually-transmitted human papillomavirus, HPV, is believed to be responsible for nearly three-fourths of cervical cancer diagnosis. Two cervical cancer vaccines, Merck's Gardasil and GlaxoSmithKline's Cervarix, will become available this year to protect women from the virus. In previous posts, we wondered what would happen to women who live in poor countries and how the cancer vaccine would be made available for them. This sounds like a start.
