About 3000 17 and 18-year-old women in Otago will be eligible for free vaccinations against the human papillomavirus (HPV) from today.
The vaccine Gardasil, which is designed to protect against HPV infection (which can cause genital warts) and can lead to the development of cervical cancer later in life, will eventually be available to all girls born on or after January 1, 1990, but the older young women will be offered the vaccine first.
Otago District Health Board planning and funding project manager Ron Craft said health providers would be offering 17 and 18-year-olds the chance to have the vaccine which is delivered in three doses.
The second dose is delivered two months after the first and the third four months later.
He hoped young women would take up the vaccine which offered protection against the two major strains of HPV that caused an estimated 70% of cervical cancer.
It was hoped that in the long term more than 30 lives might be saved annually.
Anybody of eligible age who has already paid for and received one or two doses but not the complete course can have their other dose or doses provided free. (The vaccine has been available but at a cost of $450 for the three doses.)While most of the doses are likely to be delivered in general practice at this stage, the board was talking to a range of organisations across Otago which might help deliver the vaccine when its distribution is widened next year to cover girls then in Year 8 (11-13-year-olds), those in Year 12 (15-17-year-olds) and those in Year 13 (16-18-year-olds).
Unlike many areas of New Zealand, Otago will not be offering a school-based programme next year.
Mr Craft said Otago did not have a tradition of offering school-based vaccinations and so did not have an established set-up for that.
The MenzB vaccination programme had been an exception to that.
New Zealand Nurses Organisation practice nurse representative Sally O'Connor, who criticised the organisation of the pneumococcal vaccine for babies, said practices had been provided with more information for Gardasil and there did not seem to be the same degree of confusion.
The challenge would be in getting young women into practices for the vaccinations.
Some practices might offer clinics on Saturdays or at other times.
The company involved was offering assistance for a text-messaging system to remind patients about their follow-up doses.
Some people have suggested that the vaccination programme should cover boys as well as girls since HPV infection also affects men and is associated with cancers of the penis and anus.
A delegate at the New Zealand Sexual Health Society conference in Dunedin suggested the programme did not provide equity for men.
One of the aims of the programme was to reduce inequities relating to women but men were overlooked.
Public Health physician working with the Ministry of Health HPV project team Dr Amanda D'Souza said in the first instance the programme, which involved an expensive vaccine, applied to women because they carried the brunt of the cancer risk.
Nowhere else was funding the programme for boys.
