HPV Vaccination News

It looks likely that the argument to extend HPV vaccinations to boys has been won, according to the Daily Mail

ARTICLE

The article states:

The Government’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) had previously concluded it was ‘overwhelmingly’ unlikely that vaccinating boys would be cost-effective. Its conclusions were based in part on a flawed computer model that wrongly assumed HPV caused relatively few cancers in men. But earlier this month the committee accepted new evidence that HPV causes many more cancers in men than previously thought. In particular it causes up to five times as many mouth and throat cancers as had been estimated. 

Last August, NALC responded to the JCVI, following their decision not to extend the programme to boys, and made the following comment:

We were surprised by the statistics about oropharyngeal cancer, in particular the low attribution figures of 12.4% (women) and 24.7% (men). Very much larger % are indicated in the Data for Head and Neck Oncology Report 10, published in 2015 by NHS England. It reported that over 70% of the OPSCC patients tested were HPV positive.

Now that they appear to have accepted the arguments of HPV Action and all parts of the head and neck community let’s hope there is a speedy implementation of the programme.