By Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf

Since becoming president of Liberia last year, it's been my mission to empower women in all aspects of government and society. But I can't help empower them if they die from a disease that is now within our reach to stop. Today, we have a historic opportunity to save 250,000 women every year by eradicating cervical cancer.

This opportunity comes from breakthrough vaccines that protect against most cases of cervical cancer. Yet that protection is useless to women who don't get the vaccines, or to women whose countries can't afford them. So I join in solidarity with the European Commission, which convened a conference in Brussels in September, to seek a global commitment to end what has now become a preventable disease.

Nearly all cases of cervical cancer, it is now known, are caused by strains of the sexually transmitted Human Papillomavirus, which strikes 500,000 women every year. While four out of five cervical cancer deaths occur in developing countries like Liberia, its impact is nonetheless felt everywhere. Even the leaders of the Brussels conference, Vaira Vike-Freiberga, the former president of Latvia, and Dr. Lieve Fransen, a senior European Commission health official, have lost family members to the disease.

The developing world is struck disproportionately hard by cervical cancer, where some 80 percent of cases occur. The disease usually strikes women between the ages of 35 and 50 -- which has catastrophic consequences in developing countries, where women are the backbones of their societies, communities, and families.

The commitment will require effort by both rich and poor countries, industry and activists, doctors and nurses, to vaccinate every girl. Developed countries need to extend vaccine protection to all girls for their own sake, as the United Kingdom has done. But special effort is needed in the developing world, where 200,000 women still die from cervical cancer every year. For Liberia, this will save not only our daughters, sisters, aunts and mothers - but also our farmers, market vendors and the foster parents of AIDS orphans.

Protecting every girl in Europe will also help protect every girl in Africa. Because vaccine producers can recover their investment with sales to developed countries, deeply reduced prices are possible for developing nations, allowing us to protect our girls as well. This tiered pricing is not revolutionary - and the experience with AIDS shows the world will no longer accept a situation in which where you live determines whether you live.

Just as with AIDS, some think it impossible, or a poor investment, to fight cervical cancer in the developing world. Given the host of other, equally grave medical needs in such countries, which typically spend less than $15 per person per year on health care, that grim assessment might seem fair. But the development of these vaccines means it is now possible to end a cancer that claims most of its victims in the developing world - by giving the same state-of-the-art prevention to women in the poorest countries as in the wealthiest.

We stand at a historical threshold: Cervical cancer can be eliminated in our lifetimes through greater investment in vaccination, screening, and treatment. With a relatively small expenditure of capital and political will, we could eradicate a fatal disease, all while showing the world that the life and health of women and girls matters.

The world can choose not to accept the preventable deaths of hundreds of thousands of women, whether in Monrovia or Marseille or Manila. We no longer have to watch helplessly as cervical cancer kills 1 million women every four years. We now know how to save them, and we should all help. Before these breakthrough vaccines, their deaths were tragic. Failing to act now, when help is within reach, means future deaths will be needless as well.

-- Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf is president of Liberia.

Published in Diena (Latvia)