The burden of cervical cancer in south-east Europe at the beginning of the 21st century.

The situation of cervical cancer prevention in South-East Europe is hardly documented, in spite of the fact that it encloses the most affected countries of Europe. We estimated the number of cases of cervical cancer, the number of deaths from this malignancy and the corresponding rates for 11 countries located in South-East Europe, in the period 2002-2004. Each year, approximately 9,000 women develop cervical cancer and about 4,600 die from the disease in this subcontinent. The most affected country is Romania with almost 3,500 cases and more than 2,000 deaths per year High world-age standardised mortality rates (> 7.5 [expressed per 100,000 women-years]) are observed in 7 countries: FYROM (7.6), Moldova (7.8), Bulgaria (8.0), Bosnia & Herzegovina (8.0), Albania (9.8), Serbia & Montenegro (10.1) and Romania (13.0). A matter of concern is the increasing mortality rate, in younger women, in the countries with the highest burden of cervical cancer. Thus, appropriate cervical cancer prevention programmes should be set up without delay in this part of Europe.