Main
deaths, HPV infections
VIRUS, CERVICAL CANCER, CERVICAL CANCER, HPV INFECTION
Cervical cancer burden remains high globally, with more than 600 000 cases and 340 000 deaths in 2020 and incidence and mortality rates in most countries higher than the World Health Organization (WHO) threshold for cervical cancer eliminationHPV vaccines prevent more than 90% of persistent oncogenic vaccine type-specific HPV infections, the primary cause of cervical cancerSingle-dose HPV vaccination would simplify the logistics and reduce costs of scaling up vaccine programs, lowering barriers to reaching high HPV vaccine coverage. The vaccine virus-like-particle (VLP) structure, which self-assembles to mimic the live virus without the replicating DNA, generates strong immunity with a single dose, analogous to highly immunogenic whole-virus vaccines rather than a subunit vaccine, supporting a biological mechanism for single-dose efficacy rather than the prime-boost multi-dose schedule that optimizes subunit vaccine efficacy (VE)In Kenya, the age-standardized incidence for cervical cancer is 31.3 per 100,000 person-years; annually, an estimated 5,236 new cases are diagnosed and 3,211 deaths attributable to cervical cancer occurThis study evaluated zero versus single-dose HPV vaccination and employed a superiority design to support efficacious, feasible, and timely evidence for catch-up vaccination