IARC Director addresses policy-makers and health workers in Brazil to mark 50 years of FOSP

Dr Elisabete Weiderpass, Director of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), will deliver a keynote address during a ceremony on 25 April 2024 to celebrate the 50 years of existence of the Fundação Oncocentro de São Paulo (FOSP), the Cancer Foundation of São Paulo, Brazil. FOSP is part of the Health Secretariat of the State Government of São Paulo and is responsible for cancer screening programmes and other cancer prevention initiatives.

The event will be an important occasion for Dr Weiderpass to present IARC’s activities directly to government officials and health-care workers from Brazil, including the latest estimates of the global cancer burden, the cancer burden in Brazil, the best practices and evaluations of screening strategies of the IARC Handbooks of Cancer Prevention, and IARC’s work as part of the World Health Organization (WHO) initiatives to prevent and control childhood cancer, breast cancer, and cervical cancer.

Brazil, which has been an IARC Participating State since 2013, recently took an important step in its efforts to prevent cervical cancer, based largely on research conducted by IARC. Professor Nísia Trindade Lima, the Minister of Health of Brazil, announced in early April 2024 that the country will adopt a single-dose strategy in its vaccination programmes against human papillomavirus (HPV). Special emphasis was placed on northern states where vaccination coverage is currently low, to expedite the country’s efforts towards cervical cancer elimination. HPV infection causes almost all cases of cervical cancer. A large number of cases of other cancers, such as oropharyngeal cancer and anal cancer, are also caused by HPV infection. IARC researchers showed that a single dose of vaccine against HPV is enough to confer long-term protection against HPV, equivalent to the protection offered by two or three doses.

Read more about FOSP (in Portuguese)