Scottish schools first to deliver new cancer jab

pharmafile | September 1, 2008 | News story | Sales and Marketing |  Scotland, vaccines 

Scotland's secondary schools will this week become the first in the UK to vaccinate female students against cervical cancer.

It marks the start of a national immunisation programme, which by August 2009 will see the vaccine Cervarix offered to all girls between 12 and 17 also in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Cervarix is manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline and targets the HPV virus, which causes cervical cancer. It is administered in three injections over six months and can prevent 70% of cases.

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This means it could save about 70 lives a year in Scotland, where an earlier start to the school term means the programme begins earlier than in other parts of the UK.

Across the UK all girls in Year 8 are to be immunised from this autumn, in a programme set to cost the government up to £100 million a year. A planned two-year 'catch-up' campaign, which is due to start in autumn 2009 for girls aged up to 18, is likely to cost a further £200 million.

The government chose GSK's Cervarix over Sanofi-Pasteur MSD's rival vaccine Gardasil in June this year – a decision which aroused controversy because campaigners said it ignored the wider protection offered by Gardasil.

But even with two new vaccine options for the prevention against cervical cancer, experts expect it will be decades before the rates start to decline dramatically, which is why women are still encouraged to attend three-yearly cervical smear tests.

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