Romania is the country in the European Union with the highest incidence and mortality from cervical cancer. Annually, in Romania, HPV infections are responsible for the appearance of over 3300 new cases of cervical cancer and over 1500 women lose their lives due to this type of cancer, although the approximately 4 – 5 deaths occurring on average per day they are preventable through vaccination and screening. Half of the women who receive this diagnosis are under 55 years old.
And this while Australia, for example, has a good chance of becoming, by 2030, the first country to effectively eliminate cervical cancer if vaccination and screening rates are maintained. In 2007, Australia became one of the first countries to introduce a program to vaccinate girls against human papillomavirus (HPV). Later, the program was extended to boys. The disease is about to be eradicated in Great Britain as well as in other European countries, thanks to the anti-HPV vaccine.
The HPV vaccine prevents cervical cancer by protecting against the most common types of HPV, which cause 9 out of 10 cases of cervical cancer. Vaccination against HPV is recommended between 9-14 years. Recent studies in the UK, one of the first countries to introduce it, show that HPV vaccination reduced precancerous lesions and cervical cancer by almost 90% among the first groups to receive the vaccine.
In addition to cervical cancer, HPV infection is also associated with the development of other types of cancer that affect both women and men: for example, cancers of the male or female genital organs – penis, vagina or vulva or cancer of the anus.
What is the situation in Romania? Does our country have a national cervical cancer screening program?
“In Romania there is no national screening program, it is an opportunistic screening. The government distributes funds to medical units, which use them on the principle
According to him, the population does not believe in vaccines and measures for early detection of the disease, which contributes negatively for Romania, which has the highest mortality rate from advanced cancer cases in Europe.
In 2008, Romania was among the first countries to introduce vaccination against HPV, along with Great Britain, for example. However, the vaccination campaign since then has been a total failure. Out of 110,000 schoolgirls aged between 9 and 11 – the target group for vaccination, only 2%, i.e. 2,600 girls, were vaccinated in the first year and 5% in the following year.
Why this failure? Who were the opponents of this policy?
“School doctors, the press and family doctors, because they did not mobilize to support this vaccine, for which the Nobel Prize for Medicine was taken in 2008. (…) Now the vaccination campaign has resumed, but not after a model that could have been taken over, Australian or English. It is about vaccination in schools, which includes both girls and boys, equally. Then the entire population will be vaccinated. Young people vaccinated between 11 and 14 years old, before the start of sexual life, will not develop infections, they will not develop cancers, which do not only refer to the cervix, refer to penile cancer, to oropharyngeal and anal cancer”explains prof. dr. Gheorghe Peltecu, obstetrics-gynecology primary physician at Filantropia Hospital, university professor at UMF “Carol Davila” Bucharest.
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2023-09-13 18:20:05
#Prevention #cervical #cancer #Screening #HPV #genotyping #antiHPV #vaccination #schools #Prof #Gheorghe #Peltecu
