N.L. school girls will get HPV vaccine

The government of Newfoundland and Labrador will move ahead with plans to vaccinate school girls against the human papilloma virus, or HPV, which is linked to cervical cancer.

The Department of Health and Community Services announced Tuesday that it will begin a vaccination program in schools this fall, targeting 2,800 Grade 6 girls throughout the province.

Newfoundland and Labrador follows other Atlantic provinces,as well as B.C. and Ontario, in planning to offer the vaccination to students.

Nova Scotia was one of the first provinces in the country to promise the vaccine— it will target Grade 7 girls this fall. The governments of P.E.I. and New Brunswickalso promised to get the vaccine into schools by the fall.

"This vaccine is considered one of the first and most successful steps young women can take to prevent cervical cancer and we want them to have the best advantage to avoid this terrible disease," provincial Health Minister Ross Wiseman said in a press release. "Over the past few months, we have been working in co-operation with our regional health authorities to develop a sustainable program for the delivery of this vaccine and I am pleased to say that we are proceeding as planned for the upcoming school year."

The vaccine, Gardasil, protects against four types of HPV, which together cause 70 per cent of cervical cancers and 90 per cent of genital warts. Health Canada approved Gardasil in July for females between the ages of nine and 29 and it will be available for use at the end of August.

"We made the decision to administer the vaccination program to females in Grade 6 based on several considerations, including national recommendations and timing with our other school-based vaccination programs," said Dr. Faith Stratton, the province's Chief Medical Officer of Health. "Beginning this fall, the HPV vaccine will become an established component of our provincial vaccination program."

The program will cost approximately $4.6 million over three years. There was $300 million set aside in the 2007 federal budget for provinces to run a three-year program.

HPV is said to infect half of all sexually active women between ages 18 and 22 in North America. In most women, the virus clears up on its own, but if the infection persists, in rare cases it can lead to cervical cancer.

However, health officials caution that even with the vaccine, regular pap tests are still needed to detect cancer caused by other strains of the virus.