Campaigners urge for HPV vaccine to be extended to boys
pharmafile | September 22, 2014 | News story | Manufacturing and Production, Sales and Marketing | HPV, Vaccine, boys, girls, human papilloma virus, rsph
Public health experts are meeting today to discuss whether boys as well as girls should be offered the HPV jab.
The consultation follows the publication of a paper from The Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) calling for an extension of the vaccines to be available to both sexes.
It is thought that vaccinating girls early will reduce the number of men eventually getting HPV because infection occurs through sexual contact.
A subgroup of the Joint Committee on Vaccinations and Immunisation (JCVI) will consider the cost-effectiveness of rolling out the vaccine and the possibility of initially offering it to men who have sex with men.
Countries including Australia, the US, Austria and parts of Canada have already extended the jab to include boys.
Shirley Cramer, chief executive of the RSPH argues that: “Given the strong association between HPV and oral, anal and penile cancers, and the prevention of genital warts, it makes absolute sense that the vaccine should be extended to males”.
Cramer maintains however that herd immunity will not work for all men – as those who have sex with the 15% of girls that not been vaccinated, who are sexually active in countries with females who haven’t been vaccinated, or men who only have sex with men would still be at risk from the virus.
The current ongoing debate has seen the Throat Cancer Foundation calling for boys to be given the vaccine back last year. It said the practice of only vaccinating girls was ‘discriminatory’ and argued that throat cancer from HPV was a ‘ticking time bomb’ with cases forecast to exceed cervical cancer by 2020.
There are more than 100 different types of human papilloma virus (HPV) which are responsible for around 5% of all cancers worldwide. The charity said that the vaccine cost only £45 per person and would save hundreds of lives; whereas treating a patient with throat cancer can cost the NHS up to £45,000 per patient.
Some have questioned the effectiveness of extending the jab to boys however. In the UK the HPV vaccination has achieved over an 80% coverage in girls aged 12-13 years, and Dr Kate Soldan, head of Public Health England’s HPV surveillance argues that extending the vaccine was “likely to provide relatively few additional benefits”.
She says a better approach may be to focus on men who have sex with men, who are less likely to gain protection form herd immunity. The cost-effectiveness of vaccinating men who have sex with men only is still unclear with further studies underway.
Emily MacKenzie
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