India gets its own HPV vaccine to stop 70,000 women dying of cervical cancer a year

The new HPV vaccine will bring down the country’s high rate of cervical cancer, which kills about 70,000 women a year in India. Photograph: Atul Loke/Serum Institute India

It is a Wednesday morning and Sneha Neurgaonkar sits on a gurney in a private hospital in Pune, India. The 14-year-old is at the Lalwani mother and child care hospital to receive the first Indian-made human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, which prevents cervical cancer.

Unlike the 10-year-old girl who was given the vaccine before her, Sneha knows what cervical cancer is and the damage it is doing to women in her country.