Further to news last week regarding the Human Papilloma Virus vaccine causing health problems in teenage girls the Department of Health has announced that from September 2012 the vaccine used will be swapped to Gardasil.
The move is not thought to be related to the risks found with the Cervarix vaccine but is instead due to the hope that Gardasil will protect against genital warts, alongside its protection against cervical cancer. There are multiple types of Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), many of which are responsible for genital warts, and two of which cause more than 70% of cervical cancer. Both vaccines protect against these two types of HPV but Gardasil is found to protect against more types than its cheaper alternative, Cervarix.
Gardasil has been the most popular HPV vaccine worldwide and it has been found that the numbers of people infected with genital warts in Australia dramatically fell with the introduction of the vaccine. The Department of Health is hoping that the vaccine will build on the 400 cervical cancer deaths prevented each year due to the vaccinations.
