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I come from Nigeria, a lower-middle-income nation of 230 million people. As a cancer advocate, I witness daily how it devastates families, not because we lack the knowledge to prevent many cancers, but because we lack the resources and political will to scale lifesaving preventive measures like the HPV and hepatitis B vaccines.

It is staggering that approximately 13 percent of global cancers are caused by infectious diseases that are vaccine-preventable. Yet there is a huge difference in how countries are able to access such vaccines.

Thus, when we provide HPV and hepatitis B vaccines to countries that otherwise would be unable to access them, we are not only making a highly effective health intervention, we are also making an equity intervention. The HPV vaccine protects future women from a leading cause of cancer death in women in many low- and middle-income countries — cervical cancer. Meanwhile, cases of liver cancer have been reduced by up to 91 percent in some studies of vaccinated populations. Clearly, vaccines reduce future cancer care costs, free up health systems and keep mothers alive for their children. The ripple effects are profound — for health, for economies and for the dignity of communities.

Clearly, vaccines reduce future cancer care costs, free up health systems and keep mothers alive for their children

Dr. Zainab Shinkafi-Bagudu

If these benefits are profound, perhaps what is more so is the fact that prevention in the form of vaccines creates a unique opportunity for health systems in low- and middle-income countries to move from perpetual crisis management to a cost-effective and sustainable pathway that strengthens primary healthcare, builds trust in institutions and delivers intergenerational dividends for decades to come.

This is why the upcoming replenishment of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance is an urgent opportunity to fund solutions that are backed by science, proven in implementation and catalytic in impact. It is a chance to protect millions of children and families from cancers they should never have to face.

As a public-private collaboration, Gavi has supported the vaccination of more than 1 billion children since 2000 and today ensures that over half the world’s children are protected against deadly but preventable diseases. Through this work, it has prevented more than 17.3 million deaths and helped bring about a 50 percent reduction of child mortality in 78 lower-income countries.

Thanks to advances in science and sustained efforts to grow the supply of affordable, safe and effective vaccines, Gavi has recently begun scaling up efforts to tackle the scourge of cervical cancer. In Nigeria alone, there are more than 60 million women and girls at risk from this dreadful disease. With support from Gavi, 13.6 million girls have been vaccinated against HPV in the last two years, thereby fulfilling one of the pillars of the cervical cancer elimination goals and giving a chance of life without fear of this dreadful yet preventable disease.

HPV vaccine delivery is now routinely available to girls aged nine to 14 at primary healthcare centers and Gavi is on track to have vaccinated 85 million girls worldwide by the end of the year. Without support, we will revert to zero. It is worth noting that, prior to this, only 6 million girls had been vaccinated in the entire African continent.

We have come a long way in our fight against cancer, but there is much to do. We must fund Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance

Dr. Zainab Shinkafi-Bagudu

The countries eligible for support from Gavi that have introduced the hepatitis B birth dose vaccination program are showing remarkable reduction in hepatitis B infection rates. These include Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and even China, which was an early recipient of Gavi support. This will consequently translate into a reduction in liver cancer cases.

My role as president-elect of the Union for International Cancer Control, an organization representing more than 1,200 cancer institutions across 176 countries, commits me to working alongside Gavi and other partners to ensure that vaccines are embedded in national cancer control plans and delivered with the urgency they deserve. We have come a long way already, but there is so much more work to do and we need sustainability. We need visionaries and we need investors.

In under two weeks’ time, Gavi will ask its stakeholders — a coalition of wealthier donor countries, including ºÚÁÏÉçÇø — countries that receive Gavi’s support, which are themselves stepping up more and more each year to fund their own immunization programs, and private sector and philanthropic institutions to provide the funding it needs for its next five-year strategy period.

An investment in Gavi today is not charity — it is leadership. It is foresight. And it is one of the smartest, most scalable investments anyone can make in global cancer prevention. I urge all Gavi’s traditional and new backers to step up and support its mission, to protect the world’s most vulnerable and to help countries as they themselves strive to build sustainable, self-sufficient health systems. This includes ºÚÁÏÉçÇø, which in recent years has stepped up to demonstrate true global leadership. In 2020, it became the first country in the world to back Gavi’s COVAX program for equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines. More recently, it has backed efforts to eradicate polio off the face of the Earth.

Let us match the strength of our science with the strength of our commitments, because behind every dose of vaccine is a life protected, a future restored and a generation empowered.

• Dr. Zainab Shinkafi-Bagudu is President-Elect of the Union for International Cancer Control.