School-age girls are accompanied by their and parents and guardians as they receive their Human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines at the Makati Coliseum in Makati City. Jonathan Cellona, ABS-CBN News/file
MANILA — Gender neutral interventions including vaccination and treatment, as well as the development of a national registry, are among the recommendations for HPV prevention mentioned by Gabriela Rep. Sarah Elago, Vice Chair for Visayas of the Philippine Legislators' Committee on Population and Development (PLCPD).
"First and foremost, to strengthen service delivery. Policies are already in place, but implementation needs greater focus. Revisiting vaccine provision and screening mechanisms can help identify gaps and strengthen service delivery. This includes the following – gender neutral interventions, including vaccination and treatment, development of a national registry, bringing services closer to the communities,” Elago said.
She added “prevailing misinformation” should be addressed through effective campaigns involving not only national agencies but also local government units and people's organizations.
This was tackled during the Philippine launch of the HPV Prevention Policy Atlas Asia-Pacific 2026 at the House of Representatives on Tuesday.
The atlas is a research and policy tool that assesses how countries address HPV and cervical cancer prevention, according to a post by House Committee on Women and Gender Equality Chairperson Ann Matibag.
The Philippines is in the “progressing” category with an overall score of 71.6 percent, according to PLCPD Chair Cielo Lagman.
“Are we satisfied with this? Of course not. But this is our current situation. And the important thing is let's discuss what to do about it. We do have a national HPV vaccination policy for female students aged 9 to 14, delivered through the school-based immunization program. However, the atlas shows that more work has to be done. HPV vaccination coverage among girls remains below 30 percent, while actual participation in cervical cancer screening is below 15 percent,” Lagman said.
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Elago said information efforts on HPV and cervical cancer, as well as vaccines against this, are insufficient as stigma persists.
“The information efforts about HPV, cervical cancer, and the vaccine were also found to be insufficient. Stigma persist. Misinformation is prevalent, and trust on the services is heavily affected by these factors,” Elago said.
Each country’s own culture and health system must be taken into account in devising ways to address HPV, according to European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights (EPF) Executive Director Neil Datta.
“There’s no best pathway to improve performance on HPV. Each country needs to think of how it is that it can improve its performance based on its own culture and the way that the health system functions and its own population,” Datta said.
Datta continued, “There are some recurring themes that come through. First is making immunization available to everybody. So for girls, making it available at a young age when they're in school and also rolling this out eventually to boys. As I’ve just mentioned, boys are also at risk of a certain number of cancers, and there's no screening for them. Then when it comes to screening, Philippines has what's called opportunistic screening. So it's not organized on a population-wide level. That eventually needs to change if the idea is to eliminate this very preventable cancer.”
Matibag and his husband, National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) Director Melvin Matibag, were also at the launch event.
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