It’s European Vaccination Week. In Niort, the hospital organized this Thursday, April 28 a day focused more specifically on the papillomavirus. Virus that can cause cancer like that of cervix. A vaccine exists for girls aged 11 to 14 in a two-dose schedule. Catch-up is possible up to the age of 19 with three doses. And since 2021, this vaccine is also intended for boys. No data on them yet, but among 15-year-old girls, “we are at around 50% first dose vaccination. It is clearly not enough”says Doctor Simon Sunder, head of the infectious diseases department at Niort hospital.
Several reasons according to the doctor: it is done in adolescence, it is not part of the compulsory vaccines, and then there was the effect of vaccine controversies “on the fact that there could be autoimmune diseases including multiple sclerosis. But it has been clearly demonstrated that this was not the case, there is no more problem than in the general population “insists Dr. Sunder, who recalls that “it is a vaccine that has taken a step back, we have started to vaccinate widely since 2007”.
The papillomavirus responsible for 6000 cancers per year
The papillomavirus is responsible for approximately 6000 cancers every year in France including 3000 cervical cancers. “We know that cancer of the cervix is always due to the papillomavirus. That is to say that if everyone were vaccinated against the papillomavirus, we could see cervical cancer disappear. uterus. So by today. It takes about 20 years to develop cancer. But people vaccinated today will be vaccinated against cervical cancer.”, says Dr. Sunder. This cancer causes 1000 deaths each year in France.
The boys can have “rarer cancers, of the penis, throat, anus. And then by being vaccinated, we do not transmit”.
We must not call into question everything we have acquired
The vaccines that have never been so topical with the coronavirus. And, at the same time, we are talking again about certain illnesses such as measles. “With the covid crisis, there are setbacks in vaccination, on a global scale. Measles has jumped by more than 80%. It is a disease that has not disappeared, which only requires to reappear, which is very contagious and whose impact can be serious”.
“Perhaps there is a fed up with vaccines, it can also be understood, we want to move on”, notes Dr. Sunder. “But we must not question everything we have acquired. It is true that in France we have a certain mistrust of vaccination which was fading these last last years. We have to manage to keep this momentum”.