Professor Neerja Bhatla to receive the 2023 IARC Award for Women in Cancer Research

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) is pleased to announce that the recipient of the 2023 IARC Award for Women in Cancer Research is Professor Neerja Bhatla, Head of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi, India. Established in 2022, this award recognizes outstanding contributions in the field of cancer prevention research by scientists who identify as women.

IARC Director Dr Elisabete Weiderpass will present the award to Professor Bhatla in a ceremony, followed by a presentation by Professor Bhatla on her work, which will be livestreamed and made available on the IARC YouTube channel. The ceremony will take place on Friday 13 October 2023.

For the past 35 years, Professor Bhatla’s career has been devoted to the elimination of cervical cancer, with a particular focus on low-resource settings. Her research has contributed evidence for the efficacy of single-dose vaccination against human papillomavirus (HPV) and the development of low-cost HPV tests. These, in combination with her leadership and implementation, have had a national and global impact on improving access to HPV vaccination and screening.

Professor Bhatla has championed cervical cancer awareness, education, screening, and treatment in remote and hard-to-reach populations. She organized regular mass screening and prevention camps in resettlement colonies and urban slums in Delhi. She built collaborations between professional associations and corporate social responsibility efforts to implement screen-and-treat programmes across India, and she has promoted medical education in gynaecological cancers by implementing fellowship programmes and an online training course for gynaecologists.

Professor Bhatla is a recognized leader in her field. She has served on countless advisory groups on women’s cancers and maternal health, including for the World Health Organization, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare of India, the Department of Biotechnology of India, the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation of India, and the Indian Council of Medical Research. As the chairperson of the Federation of Obstetric and Gynaecological Societies of India (FOGSI) Gynaecologic Oncology Committee, she led the development of the first resource-based recommendations for cervical cancer prevention. She was the first physician from India to be the chairperson of the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) Committee on Gynecologic Oncology, and she led the 2018 revision of the FIGO staging of cervical cancer.

Read more about the nomination process

Visit the IARC YouTube channel