Vaccination plea

Adolescent boys, as well as girls, should be included in the HPV vaccination programme

Sir, The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation is considering whether the human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccination programme should be extended beyond its target group of 12 to 13-year-old girls. In our view, all adolescent boys should also be offered the vaccine. A sexually transmitted infection, HPV is the cause of 5 per cent of all human cancers, specifically cervical, oropharyngeal, anal, penile, vaginal and vulval cancers. HPV also causes genital warts. These diseases affect males as well as females; in the UK over 2,000 cases of cancer in men are caused each year by HPV, as are some 48,000 cases of genital warts.

Even though the UK’s HPV vaccination programme reaches over 80 per cent of girls, there are many communities where coverage rates