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Tatevik Margaryan: The crucial role HPV Vaccination plays in the prevention of cervical cancer

Tatevik Margaryan/LinkedIn

Mar 5, 2025, 16:12

Tatevik Margaryan: The crucial role HPV Vaccination plays in the prevention of cervical cancer

Tatevik Margaryan, Head of Department of Non-Communicable Disease Prevention and Health Promotion at NCDC, Ministry of Health, Armenia, shared a post on LinkedIn:

“March 4 is the World HPV Awareness Day! And the NCDC of Armenia marked it with a very informative discussion session with community health workers from all over Armenia.

NCDC with the Ministry of Health Armenia, the WHO Regional Office for Europe, and FIDEC Armenia organised an impressive and interactive meeting to highlight, yet again, the crucial role HPV Vaccination plays in the prevention of cervical cancer and not only.

To quote Dr. Stepan Atoyan, the Director of NCDC Armenia, ‘We must take HPV vaccination and immunisation in general very seriously. If we can make a change, we MUST make a change’.

The slogan of 2025 HPV Awareness Day is ‘One Less Worry’, emphasising that HPV prevention is very much possible and it can become one less worry for the world if correct policies and measures are used.

One topic that has been discussed several times during this meeting was the lack of awareness about HPV and its vaccination in the general public.

There around 150 deaths in Armenia annually because of HPV, and around 250 incidence cases. And despite the very impressive fact that national HPV vaccination rates rose 3-4 folds in the last decade, it still remains an issue in Armenia.

‘Prevention is the best Treatment!’ This is the mindset that the healthcare works have in Armenia, especially the ones present at the meeting.

During the workshop conducted at the event healthcare workers performed how they communicate with people about HPV awareness and vaccination.

Various experienced healthcare workers noted that socio-cultural factor plays a huge role in standardising and adapting the information about HPV for the general population and on individual level. To say that our healthcare workers are flexible and skilled communicators would mean to say nothing at all.

Even though HPV is still a healthcare issue in Armenia, we are moving very confidently toward its elimination.”

Tatevik Margaryan: The crucial role HPV Vaccination plays in the prevention of cervical cancer