Experts say boys should have HPV vaccine too

Professor Stanley from the University of Cambridge says that boys as well as girls should be given the HPV vaccine to help protect them from HPV and related cancers (tongue, head, neck and tonsils) and discusses this in the journal Nature.  The World Health Organisation has linked HPV to more than 5% of the world’s cancers.

Professor Stanley said: “Obviously cervical cancer is the big one but in Europe and the United States and Australia, places that have got cervical cancer screening programmes, cervical cancer is very well controlled. But the other cancers, cancers of the anus and increasingly the tonsil and tongue, there is no screening for them and no way of detecting them until they are proper cancers and they are more common in men than in women.”

In the UK, only girls are vaccinated, but this means that only 50% of the population have had the vaccine, and it would help to reduce incidences if both boys and girls are vaccinated before they become sexually active as it means there will be less HPV in the population.

Better2Know offers the HPV vaccine to both men and women at some of our clinics.  Please call us for more details.