health
The human papillomavirus is the main cause of several types of cancer.
6/7/2023
It is worth saying that protection against HPV is key, because it causes the majority of cases of cervical cancer. Although these doses are currently applied to girls and adolescents before they start their sexual life, between the ages of nine and 17, there has also been talk of the importance of vaccinating other populations. .
Claudia Beltrán Arroyave, a pediatric infectious disease specialist and member of the Infectious Diseases and Vaccines Committee of the Colombian Pediatric Society, said that one of the recommendations they are making to the authorities aims to guarantee protection against HPV in children and adolescent men.
“There is a very interesting strategy, which goes hand in hand with public health, and that is to achieve access to vaccination for as many of the population as possible. This can be done with the application of a single dose of HPV in both men and women. It is one of the possibilities that have been raised, since it is a vaccine that has a very important impact, ”said Beltrán Arroyave.
Indeed, since December last year, the World Health Organization (WHO) modified its recommendations on the HPV vaccination schedule and issued a new concept in this regard.
“The document contains a claim of particular interest, namely that a single-dose regimen, called an alternative off-label single-dose regimen, may provide comparable efficacy and long-lasting protection to that of a two-dose regimen,” he said. at the time the WHO.
The concept was considered timely by several experts, since after the covid-19 pandemic, vaccination against HPV had a significant setback worldwide. According to WHO figures, the coverage of the first dose of that vaccine fell by between 15% and 25% in just two years (from 2019 to 2021). In practice, this meant that around 3.5 million girls globally stopped receiving their vaccine.
The WHO recommendation could be used to cover more girls, but also “secondary targets” such as boys and women over 17 years of age. However, the health agency advises vaccinating these populations as long as the national states find it “feasible and affordable.”
Other challenges of vaccination in Colombia
In addition to the debate on the HPV vaccine, the Colombian Society of Pediatrics has also emphasized the need to improve other aspects of vaccination coverage in Colombia.
“The PAI in Colombia has many challenges that have been raised within scientific societies. We have a very interesting way to expand it and cover the needs of the population,” said Beltrán Arroyave.
“What happened with the pandemic is that many children and adolescents did not go to vaccination centers to protect themselves and this caused the percentage of those vaccinated to drop,” added the pediatrician, although she indicated that the country “is on the right track” in the job of closing those immunization gaps.
Among other things, he stressed the importance of starting to apply a fifth dose against polio, which should be intramuscular, the tetravalent vaccine against influenza and improving the opportunity for vaccination against meningococcus.
2023-07-07 02:34:49
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