HPV vaccine for boys is here

09/07/19 . News

The Forum has welcomed the news that the HPV vaccine will be available to boys from September 2019.

From next term, boys in school year 8 will be offered the free Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccine for the first time. Girls have been vaccinated against HPV since 2008.

Worldwide, about 5% of all cancers are linked to the HPV virus. The government say that modelling by the University of Warwick estimates that by 2058 in the UK the HPV vaccine currently being used may have prevented up to 64,138 HPV-related cervical cancers and 49,649 other HPV-related cancers including cervical, penile, anal and genital cancers and some cancers of the head and neck. 

The first dose of the HPV vaccine will be offered to boys and girls aged 12 and 13 in year 8. The second dose can be given anytime between 6 to 24 months after. Two doses are needed to be fully protected. The vaccine currently used in the NHS vaccination programme is called Gardasil.

Congratulations to former Forum CEO Peter Baker, who now leads HPV Action, for all his work in this area. 

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It’s tough for men to ask for help but if you don’t ask when you need it, things generally only get worse. So we’re asking.

In the UK, one man in five dies before the age of 65. If we had health policies and services that better reflected the needs of the whole population, it might not be like that. But it is. Policies and services and indeed men have been like this for a long time and they don’t change overnight just because we want them to.

It’s true that the UK’s men don’t have it bad compared to some other groups. We’re not asking you to ‘feel sorry’ for men or put them first. We’re talking here about something more complicated, something that falls outside the traditional charity fund-raising model of ‘doing something for those less fortunate than ourselves’. That model raises money but it seldom changes much. We’re talking about changing the way we look at the world. There is nothing inevitable about premature male death. Services accessible to all, a population better informed. These would benefit everyone - rich and poor, young and old, male and female - and that’s what we’re campaigning for.

We’re not asking you to look at images of pity, we’re just asking you to look around at the society you live in, at the men you know and at the families with sons, fathers and grandads missing.

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