Professor Mark Lawler:

I can comment on screening. Obviously cervical cancer is one of the three cancers we should routinely screen for now. Unfortunately, there was a European Council declaration in 2003 advising that we want to get things right in terms of cervical cancer, bowel cancer and breast cancer but 20 years later we still have not got it right. Thankfully, there has been a renewed press to look at ways in which we can drive screening.

National governments around Europe pushed back against screening, which was very disappointing because we want to look at, for example, lung cancer screening and, potentially, prostate cancer screening and gastric cancer screening. Thankfully, lung cancer screening will happen and certainly there has been some very good work done in Ireland on that. Early detection is critical and forms the bedrock of one of our research programmes.

Everybody who requires the HPV vaccine should get it and let us remember it is not just a vaccination for girls. There has to be vaccination for boys as well because there are a number of cancers caused by HPV such oropharyngeal cancer, which in certain parts of the world is now more frequent than cervical cancer. There is a European initiative now to look at ridding the world of cervical cancer through vaccination so we need to be doing that as well.