THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

The makers of vaccines for cervical cancer have lowered the prices of their vaccines to make them widely available in all countries.

The two companies that make vaccines against cervical cancer announced Thursday that they would cut their prices to the world’s poorest countries below $5 per dose, eventually making it possible for millions of girls to be protected against a major cancer killer.

Thanks to Pap tests, fatal cervical cancers are almost unknown today in rich countries. But the disease kills an estimated 275,000 women a year in poor countries where Pap tests are impractical and the vaccine is far too expensive for the average woman to afford, so the price cut could lead to a significant advance in women’s health.

The World Health Organization, which has been pressing for faster progress in maternal health, greeted the news as “a great step forward for women and girls.”

When the new price was described, Dr. Paul D. Blumenthal, a professor of gynecology at the Stanford University School of Medicine who has pioneered cervical cancer prevention techniques in poor countries, said, “Mazel tov!” As long as there is enough affordable vaccine for the ever-growing populations of poor countries, he said, “this is good news for girls, women and their families.”

The lower prices — $4.50 for Merck’s Gardasil vaccine and $4.60 for GlaxoSmithKline’s Cervarix — were negotiated through the GAVI Alliance, which was created in 1999 with a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to deliver more vaccines to the world’s poor.

The low price will initially apply to a few million doses for demonstration projects in Kenya, Ghana, Laos, Madagascar and elsewhere, but Dr. Seth Berkley, the alliance’s chief executive officer, said he hoped that by 2020, 30 million girls in 40 countries would get the vaccine at that price or less.

The vaccines must be kept refrigerated, and the three doses are normally given over six months — requirements that add to the difficulty of deploying them in poor countries.

The vaccines cost about $130 a dose in the United States, and each girl needs three doses. The lowest price that any other agency or government has negotiated, Dr. Berkley said, is the $13 paid by the Pan American Health Organization, which negotiates a bulk price for Latin American countries.

Refrigeration and the time factor are still problems, but they are problems that can be overcome.