Citizen Voices highlights approval of the MINSA Technical Standard that allows vaccination against HPV up to 18 years of age

The president of the Citizen Voices initiative, Pilar Collantes, highlighted that the MINSA will carry out on March 27 the modification of the Technical Health Standard that establishes the National Vaccination Scheme, including immunization against the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) up to 18 years old.

He specified that this modification has also been made in the National Vaccination Plan against the Human Papillomavirus 2024, which represents a great advance in the fight against cervical cancer: “vaccination against HPV has meant from the beginning the replacement of the girl child in society, in school and in the family, giving her a central place and promoting equity. Vaccinating boys and girls places us as a country in a position of guarantors of the rights of children, in compliance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, an international United Nations treaty that Peru signed and ratified.”

The president of Voces Ciudadanas also pointed out that vaccination against HPV is one of the pillars of the World Health Organization (WHO) strategy for the elimination of cervical cancer, which could become the first type of cancer in disappear.

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Collantes called on families to go to public health facilities to receive the vaccine against the Human Papillomavirus, given that this virus is responsible for 99% of cervical cancer cases. He warned that Cervical Cancer has shown alarming levels in Peru, even surpassing breast cancer according to statistics from the Peru Cancer Situation Room 2019-2022.

He also expressed that the expansion of HPV vaccination to men and women could considerably reduce the costs derived from screening and treatment for cervical cancer, allowing optimization of the use of resources assigned to public health in the country.