In England, something remarkable is happening: young women who received the HPV vaccine as teenagers are not dying from cervical cancer. Between 2020 and 2024, zero women ages 20 to 24 who had been vaccinated as schoolgirls died from the disease.

This is not a fluke. It is the result of a national vaccination program that has been running for over 15 years—and new research is confirming what scientists had long hoped: the HPV vaccine is working exactly as intended.

The UK started offering the HPV vaccine to girls ages 12 to 13 in 2008, delivering most doses through school-based programs. The vaccine protects against the HPV strains responsible for most cervical cancers. Later, the program expanded to include boys as well. By their mid-teens, nearly 90% of girls in some age groups had completed the full vaccine course.

The results speak for themselves. One large study compared vaccinated and unvaccinated women in their 20s and found that those who received the shot at ages 12 to 13 had 87% fewer cervical cancers. Researchers estimate that the program has already prevented hundreds of deaths, with many more expected as vaccinated groups continue to age.

Cervical cancer often develops in women in their 30s and 40s, and when it strikes younger women, it can disrupt education, careers, fertility, and family life. Preventing these cases means sparing real people from grueling treatments and their long-term consequences.

The National Health Service (NHS) is so confident in this progress that it has announced a goal: eliminate cervical cancer as a public health problem in England by 2040. That means making the disease exceptionally rare, sustained by high vaccination rates alongside regular screening.

Yet the UK story carries a warning. The benefits of HPV vaccination are not guaranteed to continue—they can be lost if public confidence falters.

Japan provides a cautionary example. Japan introduced HPV vaccination in 2013 and initially reached about 70% coverage among eligible girls, similar to the UK. Then media reports emerged of girls experiencing chronic pain, headaches, and movement disorders after vaccination. Although thorough safety investigations found no evidence the vaccine caused these symptoms, the stories sparked widespread anxiety. The government suspended its active recommendation of the vaccine. Technically, it remained available, but without official backing, uptake plummeted. Among girls born in certain years, coverage dropped from around 70% to below 1% and stayed there for years.

A modeling study estimates this collapse will cause tens of thousands of extra cervical cancer cases and thousands of extra deaths over the lifetimes of those affected. Because cervical cancer develops many years after HPV infection, the damage is still unfolding.

The lesson is clear: science can produce lifesaving tools, but those tools only protect people if trust holds. The UK has kept that trust. Now the goal is to keep building on it—because a world where cervical cancer is a rarity, not a sentence, is already within reach.