Girls may get cervical cancer vaccine at school
SCHOOLS may be used to deliver the Australian-designed world-first cervical cancer vaccine to girls aged 11 and 12, under proposals being considered by federal health experts.
The inventor of the technology used to create the vaccine, Australian of the Year Ian Frazer, immunised the first women with the vaccine at launches in Sydney and Brisbane yesterday. The launches mean that the vaccine, which is sold under the brand-name Gardasil, can now be purchased from pharmacies - as long as patients have a GP's prescription and are prepared to pay the estimated $460 total cost of the three doses required over six months.
The vaccine is 100 per cent effective in preventing infection with four strains of the human papillomavirus, two of which are responsible for up to 80 per cent of the cervical cancer cases in Australia. But Gardasil's Australian maker, the Melbourne-based drug company CSL, is confident it can demonstrate to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee, which advises the federal Government on medicine subsidies, that providing Gardasil free of charge to specific groups would be cost-effective.
However, after the age of 26 there is less point in having the vaccine, as most women would already have encountered most of the strains by then.
Women will also still need to have pap smears, because Gardasil only protects against two of the 15 or so HPV strains associated with cancer.
Under the plans, due to be considered at the advisory committee's next meeting in November, the primary group targeted for vaccination would be girls aged 11 and 12. As the virus is spread during sex, girls should ideally be immunised before they have become sexually active.
Under CSL's application to the committee, there would also be a catch-up vaccination program for girls aged 13 to 17. A third group - women aged 18 to 26 - would also be able to get the vaccine free of charge through their GPs.
If approved, the earliest that a schools-based immunisation program could start would be February 2008. Professor Frazer said yesterday he was excited to see his invention brought to the market.
The first woman to receive the vaccine yesterday, 24-year-old Kate Willetts, said she was eager to step forward after treatment four years ago to remove pre-cancerous cells detected during a pap smear. "It wasn't a good thing to go through - I wasn't expecting to get an abnormal pap smear at 20," she said.
You'd become immune to antibiotics. Not a vaccine. Excuse my stupidity.
