2023-09-22 01:35:00
Reference image. With this vaccine it is hoped to prevent men from transmitting the virus.
Photo: AP – AP Agency
The Minister of Health, Guillermo Alfonso Jaramillo, announced today good news for public health in Colombia: starting September 30, children (men) will begin to be vaccinated against the human papillomavirus (HPV) that causes cervical cancer.
So far, only women have been vaccinated, since they are the ones who develop cervical cancer, a disease that is the leading cause of death from cancer among women between 30 and 59 years old. (Read Bad news can also ruin vaccination))
However, since men are transmitters, it is also essential to vaccinate them. “Men do not have symptoms, but we transmit cancer,” said the Minister of Health.
According to Jaramillo, the launch of the process will take place in El Paraíso, in Ciudad Bolívar, where children will begin to be vaccinated. Although it did not give many details of what this path will be like, the Colombian Association of Scientific Societies had already given some clues weeks ago, when it assured in a statement that the vaccine will be included, free of charge, in the Expanded Immunization Plan (PAI) for boys and men under 18 years of age. (Read The other side of indigenous suicides in Vaupés)
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In a letter, the doctor Natalia Castrillón Valencia assured that the Association, in the company of the members of the Colombian Association of Hematology and Oncology (Acho), as well as the Colombian Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (Fecolsog), had recommended to the ministry of Health extend HPV vaccine coverage to boys and men under 18 years of age.
Until now, the PAI only contemplated the quadrivalent vaccine for girls in the fourth year of school aged 9 years or older, up to grade 11, as well as out-of-school women between 9 and 17 years old. According to the National Cancer Observatory, 3,800 cases of cervical cancer are reported each year.
This measure is also essential to recover HPV vaccination rates, which plummeted after 2014 due, among other reasons, to serious errors that journalists made when reporting on this biological.
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