HPV Vaccines and Cervical Cancer
The new HPV vaccines that prevent infection with the human papilloma virus have caused a major stir throughout the United States. Questions have been raised about how safe they are, whether they will work, who should get them and how? To help women sort through the controversy and understand the facts, the National Women’s Health Network has updated its fact sheet on Vaccines for HPV and Cervical Cancer. This alert will give you a brief sense of our perspective on this hot issue, and for those who want more details, a link to the more comprehensive fact sheet.
HPV is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the United States. Most types of HPV are harmless, but some can increase the risk for cervical cancer. The new vaccines target two types of HPV that can lead to cervical cancer, and one also prevents infection with types that cause genital warts. We believe that HPV vaccines have the potential to be an important step forward in cancer prevention for women. However, the potential will only be realized if the vaccines are made accessible to the women who are at greatest risk for cervical cancer. This means we have to ensure access for all women, including low income women, women of color, and any woman who cannot receive regular medical care. And the investment in vaccines must not come at the expense of cervical cancer screening – even women who have been vaccinated must continue to get regular pap smears.
One vaccine manufacturer has funded a major push to make the HPV vaccine a part of school entry requirements. If the promise of these vaccines holds up over time, we believe that making them a part of school-entry requirements is likely to be the best way of ensuring that all girls, regardless of economic status or race, will have access. But we are opposed to singling the HPV vaccine out for special treatment (rushing to instate it more quickly than we would another vaccine or not instating it at all) either because of a corporate profit incentive or because of the political agenda of abstinence-only conservatives.
For further discussion of the vaccine see the NWHN fact sheet on Vaccines for HPV and Cervical Cancer.
Sourse: The National Women’s Health Network improves the health of all women by developing and promoting a critical analysis of health issues in order to affect policy and support consumer decision-making.
