Oral Health Foundation calls for Gender Neutral HPV Vaccination
In the wake of a rapid increase of mouth cancer cases, the Oral Health Foundation has renewed its calls for the introduction of HPV vaccination for men as well as women, a leading cause of mouth cancer along with other conditions, in the United Kingdom.
Within the last 30 years the rate of people being diagnosed with mouth cancer has increased by nearly 300%, and is set to rise by another third before the year 2035.
Currently, the Human Papillomavirus vaccine is exclusively provided to school-age girls in order to protect against cervical cancer however the Oral Health Foundation are claiming a wider roll out will lead to increased savings and help protect men from a number of cancers.
Peter Baker, the HPV Action Campaign Director of the Oral Health Foundation, claimed it was a long overdue decision to vaccinate boys and girls with HPV, as is the case in the United States, Australia, Brazil, Austria, Israel, Canada and now Italy. With the virus being the cause of 5% of all cancers in the world, he called it unacceptable to not provide the vaccine to boys.
CEO of the Oral Health Foundation, Dr Nigel Carter, noted that with Mouth Cancer cases increasing to over 7,500 per year in the UK, that everything possible needs to be done to stop this trend from continuing, and noted the potential savings to the NHS, given that the cost of treating HPV conditions in men is more than the cost of adding school-age boys to the UK HPV vaccination programme.
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