BUCHAREST, Nov. 20 (Xinhua) -- Romanian Health Minister Eugen Nicolaescu announced on Thursday the start of the national HPV (the human papilloma virus) vaccination campaign for prevention of cervical cancer.

    According to the official, this free vaccination program starts in schools on Nov. 24, with 110,000 girls aged 11 scheduled to receive the vaccine in a three-shot course covering six months.

    Nicolaescu said that HPV is responsible for 99 percent of cervical cancer cases and that Romanian reality calls for the implementation of this program.

    "In the last 20 years Romania has been ranking first in Europe by cervical cancer mortality, which is 6.3 times higher than the EU average. Even worse, the death rate for cervical cancer has been rising steadily in the past 18 years," said the minister.

    Six women die every day of this disease in Romania and more than 3,000 are diagnosed every year with cervical cancer, which is the major cause of mortality in Romania for women suffering from cancer, in the 15-44 age bracket, he added.

    "Cervical cancer is the second most common cancer type in women aged below 45. Every two minutes a woman dies of cervical cancer in the world," he said.

    He said the campaign costs 23 million euros (about 28.84 million U.S. dollars) in total and that although the figure may seem high, it is three times lower than the 70 million euros spent to treat women afflicted with the disease.

    According to Nicolaescu, 17 EU member states, including Germany ,Britain, France, Italy and Spain, already introduced the free cervical cancer vaccination in their national vaccination schedules. (1 U.S. dollar = 0.7973 euro)