Indonesia will produce drugmaker Merck & Co's vaccines for human papillomavirus (HPV), the chief of its state-owned pharmaceutical company Bio Farma said on Tuesday, in a bid to combat HPV-linked cervical cancer in the country.
Cervical cancer is the fourth-most common cancer among women globally, with an estimated 604,000 new cases and 342,000 deaths in 2020, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). About 90% of new cases and deaths worldwide occurred in low- and middle-income countries that year.
