Letters / Sad at poor uptake of HPV vaccinations
I’m one of the Shetland doctors, and I’m also a parent of a child in S1 at the Anderson – I’m writing because I’m sad.
This week, I, along with all the other parents of high school S1s, received a letter letting us know how poor the uptake of HPV vaccination has been, and urging parents to sign their children up for the jab.
This letter made me so very sad.
Before working in Shetland, I worked as a doctor in Africa. I looked after numerous young women, often mothers, often in the prime of their lives, die from cervical cancer.
It was too often a humiliating, disfiguring, painful kind of death stealing women who should have been with their families and their children. In the UK, cervical cancer is really quite rare. That makes us not think about it as a problem.
The lowish rates are thanks to a pretty good cervical screening programme that catches lots of cervical disease before it gets to be cancer. But there are problems with cervical screening.
As anyone who has been invited for screening knows, it’s easy to put off that uncomfortable, slightly embarrassing visit to the health centre. And it doesn’t catch everyone. It doesn’t catch all the cancers, and sometimes it finds them late. It wasn’t in time for a relative of mine, who is, very sadly, no longer with us – never had a chance to live her best life.
The amazing thing is that we now have a way of preventing 80 to 90% of cervical cancers. And other cancers too, like some mouth cancers and other genital cancers. It just takes one tiny needle and the job is done. Cervical cancer can be relegated to the small print if we vaccinate our young people. This is something to celebrate.
It’s important that the jab reaches the young person before the HPV virus does (this is the virus that triggers most cervical cancers.) That’s why we offer the vaccination to 11 to 13 year olds.
So, if you are one of those parents who isn’t sure about vaccinating your child, or if you have a child who says they are afraid of needles, can I offer a heartfelt encouragement to take up the offer of the jab? If you are still not sure, do go and see your GPs and practice nurses to explore your concerns.
If we do this well as a community, we can make our community a healthier place in the future.
Margaret Reeves
Burra
