Cervical cancer screening is widely used worldwide, which led to a significant decrease
both in incidence and mortality of the disease in several countries. Cervical cancer
screening was introduced in the 1950s as opportunistic method for secondary prevention
of cervical cancer in Hungary, later, however, became a part of National Immunization
Program. Detection of human papillomavirus (HPV) is the first-line method of screening
in several countries before cytology, which has been proposed to be introduced in
Hungary by several groups. The incidence and mortality of cervical cancer can be reduced
further or even completely eliminated by the application of HPV vaccines first by
2- , followed by 4- and recently by 9- valent HPV vaccines. Nationwide vaccination
program for 12-year-old girls was introduced in 2014 which was extended for boys of
the same age in 2020 involving 60-80% of the target population in Hungary. The next
step would be to extend the vaccination program as catch up and pre- or postconization
vaccination to approach the WHO goal for elimination of HPV infection and cervical
cancer.
