Recommendations have been produced on the basis of the best available evidence. However, high-quality evidence was not available. Such evidence is needed, in particular for screen-and-treat strategies that are relevant to low- and middle-income countries.

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GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals SA.

This article presents the data on the HPV prevalence, HPV type distribution, and their role in cervical carcinogenesis in 5 Asian countries. These data are of relevance to public health authorities for evaluating the existing and future cervical cancer prevention strategies including HPV-DNA testing-based screening and HPV vaccination in these Asian populations.

Precancerous cervical lesions precede the development of invasive cervical cancer by 10-20 years, making cervical cancer preventable if these lesions are detected and effectively treated. Treatment has evolved in the last few decades and now includes ablative options that can be performed in lower-resource settings where surgical excision is not feasible or routinely available. Gas-based cryotherapy, which freezes cervical tissue to induce localized necrosis, is the most commonly used ablative treatment.However, its implementation in low-resource settings is difficult because the refrigerant gas can be difficult to procure and transport, and is expensive. New cryotherapy devices that do not require an external supply of gas appear promising. Thermal coagulation, which burns cervical tissue to induce necrosis, has become more widely available in the last few years owing to its portability and the feasibility of using battery-powered devices. These two ablative treatments successfully eradicate 75%-85% of high-grade cervical lesions and have minor adverse effects. K E Y W O R D SCervical precancer; Cryotherapy; Low-and middle-income country; Thermal coagulation; Treatment | INTRODUCTIONAlthough cervical cancer is preventable, more than half a million women around the world develop this disease every year, and around 270 000 die.1 The main reasons for these unnecessary deaths are the lack of screening, management, and treatment for women at the target age for secondary prevention in many low-and middle-income countries This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.