A remarkable new study out of Scotland shows that since the country began vaccinating against the human papillomavirus (HPV) in 2008, not a single girl given the vaccine has contracted cervical cancer. Not one.
HPV is a common virus, responsible for a variety of symptoms, including genital warts, but also several types of cancer, cervical cancer being the most common. It is usually contracted by having sex with someone infected with the virus.
B.C. began vaccinating Grade 6 girls in 2010. In 2017, Grade 6 boys were included. Two shots are required, five months apart.
Yet the uptake has been disappointing. While vaccination rates for other diseases such as hepatitis B, polio and measles are frequently in the 90 per cent range, in B.C. the uptake rate for girls was just 66 per cent in 2019 (the most recent year for which numbers are available). For boys, the uptake was 63.5 per cent.
That puts B.C.’s scores near the bottom, nationwide. And in North Vancouver Island, the numbers get worse. That year only 53 per cent of girls and 55 per cent of boys were vaccinated for HPV.
Yet, last year, an estimated 1,550 women were diagnosed with cervical cancer across the country, and 400 died. Around one-fifth of the women who died were aged 40 to 59.
In B.C., around 200 women will be newly diagnosed each year and as many as 50 may die.
In one respect, the resistance to HPV vaccination is understandable.
Many parents fear that having children as young as 11 or 12 exposed to a vaccination intended to prevent sexually transmitted diseases can be harmful. They want their children to grow up in a non-sexualized environment, and not be hurried into adolescence.
Yet as the effectiveness of HPV vaccination becomes ever more clear, those beliefs, while natural, cannot be defended as being in a child’s best interests.
The prevention rate for cervical cancer alone — near 100 per cent — is almost unheard of in the world of vaccines. Flu vaccines rarely rise above 50 per cent effectiveness, and while COVID vaccines are around 95 per cent effective over a two-month period, that number falls to 67 per cent over seven months.
It has been estimated that a worldwide HPV vaccination program could nearly wipe out cervical cancer. And now it appears that HPV vaccination also reduces the risk of mouth, throat, head and neck cancers.
The broader question is whether vaccines can be found for other cancers. To date, other than HPV vaccines, only one cancer vaccine has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Sipuleucel-T can be used to treat some forms of prostate cancer. Whether more varieties of vaccine can be developed that are effective against other cancers is as yet unknown.
In part, that’s because the underlying mechanisms that cause many cancers are not fully understood. And in part, it’s because this is a relatively new field. HPV vaccine only became available in 2006.
What we can say is that it is essential that parents with young children be fully informed. They need to know both the benefits of HPV vaccination, and the risks associated with refusing the treatment.
The provincial health ministry has recognized the urgency. There have been several public information campaigns, and in the NDP’s election platform, released last week, there is a commitment to providing self-screening kits to test for the virus.
That’s well and good. But as kids head back to school, now would be a good time to send every parent a bulletin advising them of the need to have their children vaccinated and telling them how successful this treatment is.
