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International Women's Day is a time when we take stock of each year's progress on women's rights. This assessment takes place all over the world, involving both women and men, and usually reveals some progress. Sadly, it also suggests we still have a long way to go.

Women and young girls continue to lack sufficient access to health, education and wealth, particularly in the poorest countries. Socially unjust disparities between women in rich and poor countries are an additional grim reminder of how much remains to be done.

Increasingly, however, we are being provided with the tools to make a powerful and positive impact on women's health. New technologies offer the potential for major advances. Researchers are working hard to develop new technologies -- they have already developed mammograms and Pap tests, which are already part of women's regular health checks in developed countries.

We also have the first vaccine to be developed specifically for women, a vaccine against the human papillomavirus (HPV), which causes most of the half a million cases of cervical cancer diagnosed each year. The first of two HPV vaccines is already licensed in 38 countries. This vaccine must be made available to women and young girls, especially in the poorest countries.

Studies show that it's more cost effective to invest in prevention than in treatment. Some diseases, such as cancer, cannot be successfully treated once they progress beyond a certain stage. Indicators show that insufficient progress has been made on women's health, particularly in developing countries. We also know that little progress has been made in recognizing a woman's right to sexual and reproductive health -- in part because women lack the means to protect themselves.

Rich countries' health systems offer Pap smears, which often detects HPV early enough to prevent progression to cervical cancer. But for most women in developing countries, Pap tests are out of reach or unavailable. The consequences for women's health are disastrous, especially in combination with the HIV/AIDS pandemic. As a result, cervical cancer mainly takes its toll in the poorest countries: Of the 270,000 cervical cancer deaths worldwide, 85 per cent are in developing countries.

New technologies, such as the HPV vaccine, should be made available, accessible and affordable for the developing world. We should not allow a repeat of the hepatitis B vaccine, which was readily available in the developed world for more than 18 years before being introduced in the poor countries with the world's highest incidence of liver cancer.

The recent experience of global health organizations, such as the GAVI Alliance, shows that new and innovative financing models can facilitate the introduction and affordability of new vaccines and technologies, with dramatic effects on the number of lives saved. The GAVI Alliance could potentially play a similar role to fund the introduction of the vaccine against HPV. If no such concerted effort is made and if current trends in women's health continue, there are projected to be more than a million new cases of HPV a year by 2050.

The international community must address this glaring inequity between women in poor countries and those living in developed countries. We know that mammograms and Pap smears have saved the lives of women in wealthy countries. We know that a global effort to make new life-saving vaccines widely available and affordable could similarly play an important role in curtailing millions of unnecessary deaths of women and girls in the poorest regions. This is a compelling case for action, and we need women power to drive it home.

Graça Machel, author of the 1996 United Nations report Impact of Armed Conflict on Children, is president of the Foundation for Community Development. Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, is president of Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative.