Today, Saturday, March 4, we will celebrate one more year the day of awareness about the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV). It is the most frequent sexually transmitted infection in both men and women, since it affects 91% of men and 82% of women throughout their lives.
We are lucky that it is a very stable virus and that it is generally transmitted during the first sexual relations and that it usually disappears spontaneously (clears) before the age of 25. Those cases in which it persists over time are the ones that worry us the most, since persistence is a fundamental factor in developing cancers, not only in the genital territory of men and women, but also in areas such as the oropharynx or larynx.
For all these reasons and having achieved an effective and safe vaccine, all countries have included this health risk in their vaccination schedule. In Spain, and since the health powers are transferred to the autonomous communities, they are the ones in charge of organizing the vaccination schedules.
The Junta de Andalucía, through the Ministry of Health and Consumption, has communicated the new vaccination schedule in order to extend coverage to 90% of the population in people under 18 years of age. In this way, vaccination is financed for all boys and girls who were born in 2011, in the same way a recruitment will be carried out for those people between 13 and 18 years of age who are not vaccinated or whose vaccination has been incomplete. It is a significant economic effort to finance the vaccine for the entire population under 18 years of age, but it is worth eradicating the burden of disease that would entail a significant cost.
The ideal would be to obtain primary prevention that would cover 100% of the population, but this would be thinking of an idyllic situation that does not exist in any country. There will always be a hard-to-get anti-vaccination sector that opts for vaccination, but given the efficacy and safety results obtained so far, it is possible that people who have doubts can get vaccinated. There has not been any case so far that has had any adverse effect after vaccination except those of redness or discomfort in the place of the application.
The health sector must carry out an active promotion in favor of HPV vaccination, especially in those people who have already had a preneoplastic lesion. For this reason, in Andalusia, the Ministry has established that as of today, those women whose cytologies are altered by HPV can be vaccinated for free, whatever their age.
There is also a section for the special situations of immunocompromised patients, HIV and other diseases that cause depression of the immune system, such as transplant recipients. When the first vaccine was marketed in Spain in 2009, it seemed a challenge to generate immunity against nine HPV serotypes that represent 90% of the lesions caused by its participation. Not only can we prevent cervical cancer, but many more diseases at a very significant personal and financial cost.
I wish there were vaccines for breast cancer, which is plaguing our female population severely. It is certain that no one would be against vaccination to prevent it. We have a safe vaccine capable of reducing and/or eliminating many cancers caused by HPV. What are we waiting for?
