It sounds an almost impossible tragedy: in the forests, paddy-fields and dense urban sprawl of Southeast Asia, a silent killer stalks women and girls — yet one that we know how to stop. Every two minutes, a woman somewhere in the world succumbs to cervical cancer — largely preventable, often treatable — yet in the Southeast Asia region, the toll in 2022 was an estimated 160,000 new cases and 100,000 deaths, according to data from the World Health Organization, representing roughly one-quarter of the global burden.
That statistics takes on extra weight when you pause to consider the lives behind the numbers: mothers, daughters, wives, sisters, often in their prime, raising children or tending households, facing a disease most often caused by a virus and yet largely preventable.
For Southeast Asia the brake on this disease is not just medicine but culture and access. The region spawns a perfect storm of high incidence and mortality: weak screening programmes, limited HPV (human papillomavirus) vaccine uptake, socio-cultural barriers and health systems still stretched by other burdens. In many countries of the region — including Bangladesh, Nepal, parts of Indonesia and Myanmar — fewer than one in five women receive regular screening and HPV vaccine coverage remains well below the targets.
The good news is that the science of prevention is clear. Up to 95% of cervical cancers are caused by persistent infection with high-risk HPV strains. Vaccinating girls aged nine to 14 before sexual debut, screening women around ages 30-45 with high-performance tests, and treating precancerous lesions are proven, cost-effective strategies. The WHO has pressed the 2030 “90-70-90” goals: 90% of girls vaccinated, 70% of women screened by 35 and again by 45, and 90% of those with disease treated.
And yet — many Southeast Asian societies juggle layered barriers. In some rural areas women delay screening because of shame, fear or simply the idea that it’s only for the wealthy city-dweller. HPV vaccines may be seen as irrelevant or linked erroneously to promiscuity, especially in cultures where discussion of sexual health remains taboo. Logistical challenges mean in archipelagos and remote borderlands health centres offering screening are rare. At the same time, a mother’s death hits families hard when alternative care for children is scant and societal safety nets weak.
For example, in a recent India-based push, doctors were trained to reach out into communities, tackle vaccine misinformation, and bring cervical cancer prevention into the mainstream of women’s health — a sign that even in the world’s largest democracy the inertia runs deep. In Cambodia, promotional materials point to HPV vaccine intake as a mother’s act of “keeping the daughter safe even when the mother is far away”: weaving prevention into local cultural metaphor helps.
Some countries in the region are showing the way: eight nations have introduced nationwide HPV vaccination and several (six according to WHO) have population-based screening programmes of varying coverage. Bhutan has even reportedly met its interim 2030 targets for cervical cancer elimination as a “health flagship project”. But these are the exceptions, not yet the norm.
With nearly a half-million women dying annually in the region and younger girls still unprotected, the urgency is as much about social justice as public health. The message echoes in the corridors of capitals from New Delhi to Jakarta: act now to prevent the deaths of women whose lives matter, whose families depend on them, and whose loss would ripple beyond the clinic.
If Southeast Asia truly embraced a combined approach — affordable HPV vaccines for all eligible girls, accessible screening for women regardless of geography, plus universal treatment access — the region could slash its cervical cancer burden within a generation. The tools already exist. The cultural challenge is real: normalising preventive screening, addressing gender norms, dispelling vaccine myths, and ensuring health systems reach every girl and woman. For a region so rich in life, culture and resilience, cervical cancer must become an old-chapter, not a continuing tragedy.
Let Auntie be very clear today — louder than a temple gong at 5 a.m. — Southeast Asia is failing its women, and it doesn’t have to be this way. Cervical cancer is not some mysterious curse, not a karmic punishment, not a divine test. It is a preventable disease. We have a vaccine. We have screening tools. We have treatment. What we do not have, apparently, is the collective courage to make women’s health a national priority.
To the governments of this region — yes, all of you from Delhi to Dili — Auntie says this with love and indignation: save the lives of your women. How? One magic word: normalize. Normalize screening. Normalize HPV vaccination. Normalize treatment. Normalize talking about vaginas, cervixes, sex, and reproductive health without acting like someone dropped a live cobra in the room. Enough with fear, shame, stigma and that endless cultural script of “good women don’t discuss such things.” Good women die because of that silence.
I’ve been traveling across Southeast Asia for decades. I’ve met grandmothers who never had a single health check in their lives because “the husband would not approve.” I’ve met teenage girls who weren’t allowed to get the HPV vaccine because “the aunties in the village said it encourages promiscuity.” I’ve met young mothers diagnosed far too late — because the health center was a four-hour bus ride away, or because the nurse was a man, or because their own mothers taught them that pelvic exams are shameful.
Well, Auntie says: shame is killing us. And ignorance is accelerating the funeral procession.
We need schools that explain HPV without euphemisms. We need religious leaders who bless vaccination programmes instead of whispering doubts. We need health clinics where women feel safe, respected and informed. We need national campaigns that put cervical cancer on billboards, on morning TV, on TikTok, everywhere. If governments can plaster election posters on every tree, they can certainly promote life-saving screenings.
And societies — oh yes, I’m talking to the uncles, the husbands, the mothers-in-law — you too must evolve. Stop controlling women’s bodies under the guise of “protection.” Start supporting their right to health.
Because here’s the truth: when a woman dies of cervical cancer, an entire family fractures. Children drop out of school. Income vanishes. Grief becomes generational.
So let’s stop pretending this is fate. It’s not. It’s policy. It’s priorities. It’s courage.
Normalize prevention. Normalize screening. Normalize treatment.
Normalize saving women’s lives.