Healthy Skepticism Library item: 6323

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Publication type: news

Dickson L.
Free vaccine urged for genital warts, cancer vaccine
The Vancouver Sun 2006 Oct 19

Full text:

Louise Dickson, CanWest News Service
Published: Thursday, October 19, 2006

Doctors are asking the province to pay for a new vaccine to protect girls from genital warts and cervical cancer, which kills 400 Canadian women each year.

The human papilloma virus, or HPV, vaccine, approved by Health Canada for females aged nine to 26 years, costs about $400 for three doses.

“My greatest fear is that those who can afford the vaccine will get it and those who are at greatest risk will not get it,” says Frank Jagdis, a Victoria pediatrician and infectious disease specialist.

“I realize it’s a complex decision and health care dollars are precious, but everyone deserves to be protected. That’s the principle of public health.”

Each year in Canada, 1,350 women will develop cancer of the cervix. The HPV virus, which is transmitted through sexual activity, causes all cases.

At some point in their lives, 50 to 70 per cent of all sexually active women will contract HPV. Most women clear the infection within a few weeks or months. But in a relatively small number of people, the virus will remain, causing benign warts or cervical cancer or vaginal cancer.

In North America, pap smear screening programs have decreased cervical cancer by about 75 per cent. Worldwide, however, cervical cancer is the second most frequent cancer with a mortality rate of 50 per cent.

Victoria physician Darcy Nielsen is concerned about high-risk women in the first nations and street populations who don’t get regular pap smears.

“How we should proceed with immunization is a huge issue,” says Nielsen, who has had two patients in their 30s die of cervical cancer. “The government is being lobbied like crazy to make this vaccine available.”

The National Advisory Committee on Immunization is reviewing scientific evidence for the new vaccine. It expects to publish its recommendations by the end of 2006.

Provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall says B.C.‘s communicable disease advisory committee will study the vaccine and make recommendations to the provincial government on whether and how to proceed with immunization by spring 2007. Some issues to consider are whether boys, who spread the disease, should be immunized as well, and whether two doses would work as well as three and be more cost-effective.

Administering the HPV vaccine doesn’t mean sexually active teenagers don’t need condoms, Kendall says. And it doesn’t remove the need for continued screening for cervical cancer.

Since 2003, the B.C. government has introduced 11 new or expanded vaccine programs including meningococcal C, hepatitis B and chicken pox, largely because of a three-year $300-million national immunization strategy by the former federal Liberal government that ends this year.

© The Vancouver Sun 2006