Health News: Health priorities differ where women's protection still needs to improve

healthydailymail.com Dr. Canfell say in medicalnewstoday argues that although it is appropriate for richer countries to follow the US in considering vaccination of boys, the current cervical cancer prevention priorities in low- and middle-income countries should remain focused on females.

She says the development of programs that integrate vaccinating young girls with screening older women are the way forward, adding: "Based on experience in developed countries, this will also provide benefits for men through indirect vaccine protection."

The case for this approach is based on the fact cited by Dr. Canfell that 87% of the 610,000 worldwide cancers annually attributable to HPV are in women - cancers of the cervix - and three quarters of these occur in countries with a low or medium human development index.

In developed countries meanwhile, such broader efforts to prevent cervical cancer in women are less of a concern, where the focus "has now, appropriately," shifted to considering the following issues for "boys, men who have sex with men, and older women:"

Burden of HPV-related disease

Safety, effectiveness, acceptability, equity and cost-effectiveness of vaccination.

For women's burden of HPV-related disease, the editorial points out that vaccination is increasingly only part of the concern, and outside of the richest countries, hundreds of millions of older women would remain at risk "even if" a substantial majority of young girls were vaccinated.

This is because vaccination alone will not prevent the effect of population aging "driving" increasing cervical cancer numbers over the next few decades.

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