This page sets out what WHO and WHO AFRO record about the national programme: its target ages, the test in routine use, coverage, treatment for a positive screen, and how the 2030 elimination target is defined.
What is established about the national programme
A national cervical screening programme is recorded as existing, with a target range of 30–49 years, and 15–49 for women living with HIV. Delivery is recorded as opportunistic rather than organised (opens in a new tab) (WHO Global Health Observatory, indicator NCD_CCS_cervicalcancerpgmtype, data years 2015, 2017 and 2019), and VIA as the most widely used method (NCD_CCS_cervicalcancermethod, through 2021). In practice that means a screen occurs where a woman presents at a facility that offers it and a clinician raises it.
Coverage among women aged 30–49 in 2019 was 4% ever screened [3–7], 3% within five years, 2% within three and 0% within one year (NCD_CXCA_SCREENED_WITHIN_TIMEPERIOD). Three WHO-family sources carry the estimate independently: the Global Health Observatory series, WHO’s 2021 Ethiopia cervical cancer country profile, and the ICO/IARC HPV Information Centre’s Ethiopia report. The 2019 estimate is the current national figure.
Treatment for a positive screen was described by WHO AFRO in November 2025 as cryotherapy, thermal ablation or LEEP, delivered with continuity of care at primary health care level. Same-visit treatment has been delivered at scale: in the month-long campaign across six regions from 7 November 2025, 275,607 women were screened against a target of 267,662 (opens in a new tab), 9,882 pre-cancerous lesions were identified and about 7,836 treated the same day. Read that as campaign throughput delivered with external logistical support rather than as routine health-system capacity.
A national breast cancer screening programme is also recorded as existing, for 2021.
The test and the target
WHO’s 2030 target of 70% is written for a high-performance test, meaning HPV DNA or an equivalent molecular assay. The 4% recorded for 2019 is a VIA-based figure, and VIA does not meet that definition, so it does not count toward the target as written.
WHO’s current recommendations are screening from age 30 every 5 to 10 years with a high-performance test; from age 25 every 3 to 5 years for women living with HIV; and a minimum standard of two lifetime screens, by age 35 and again by 45 (opens in a new tab). Its implementation guidance for HPV-based programmes (opens in a new tab), published 14 July 2026, states that self-collected samples are as reliable as provider-collected ones; a separate guideline on HPV DNA genotyping was published on 8 May 2026.
The November 2025 campaign was described as using VIA and HPV testing where available.
Service models and referral
WHO describes two models. Screen-and-treat gives treatment at the same visit as the screening test. Screen, triage and treat interposes a second test requiring a second visit, and is what WHO recommends for women living with HIV. The difference determines how many journeys a woman makes, which in an opportunistic programme bears directly on whether treatment happens.
Ethiopia’s stated intention, recorded by WHO AFRO in January 2026, is to deliver these services within primary health care and the Health Extension Program, which reaches health posts at kebele level.
Where a pathway is needed for a particular patient, the questions that settle it locally are: which facility level performs each step, what triggers onward referral, what intervals are expected, and where colposcopy, pathology and definitive treatment are available. Those are worth putting to the woreda or regional health office rather than assumed from a national document.
Programme documents and capacity
WHO’s 2021 country profile records that national cancer management guidelines exist. A five-year screening interval is on record from recommendations dating to 2015; WHO’s current recommendation, above, is 5 to 10 years with a high-performance test.
On equipment, eighty-seven primary health care facilities were equipped under a donor-funded programme, and WHO was procuring 30 thermal ablation machines as of November 2025.
The advanced-stage figure and the campaign total
WHO AFRO recorded in November 2025 that more than 80% of Ethiopian cervical cancer cases are diagnosed at an advanced stage (opens in a new tab), attributing this to screening access, awareness and socioeconomic barriers. It describes cases that reached a facility, so read it as a case series rather than a population estimate.
Partners put the annual requirement for the 2030 targets at about 2.6 million women screened, in WHO AFRO’s closing release of 15 January 2026. The November 2025 campaign delivered roughly a tenth of one year’s requirement — a calculation by the Ethiopian Organization for Cancer Prevention and Research (CPR – Ethiopia) from those two WHO AFRO figures.
Related material
Public-facing accounts are on cervical screening and where to get screened; the brief cervical screening in Ethiopia sets out the same evidence for a ministerial audience. Corrections reach cancer.prev.ethio@gmail.com.