Why there is still a high rate of HPV associated cervical cancer in the US?

Based on data from 2009 to 2013 from the CDC, there are 23,300 cases of HPV associated cancers in women, and around 16, 500 cases in men, adding up to a total of 39,800 cases of HPV associated cancers in the US annually.  If there is a vaccine available for HPV like Gardisil that protects against the key HPV strains 16 and 18 associated with cervical cancers among women, why is the incidence of HPV associated cervical cancer cases so high? Well the vaccine is certainly not the problem, it is highly efficacious, the problem lies in factors that we may not initially see or think about.

For instance, some individuals just can’t afford to even get the vaccine, or they don’t have easy access to having the option to decide to get an HPV vaccine. Another important factor apart from economical and geographic factors includes a behavioral one. In South Carolina for instance, there are extremely low rates of vaccination with HPV vaccine in children, where only 29% are vaccinated with a first dose and an even lower 13% get vaccinated with the second dose. Why? Many parents have misconceptions about the HPV vaccine, where some see it as enabling sexual activity in their children, although this is not the case at all. Quadrivalent Gardasil vaccine protects against the development of cancer, and thus both boys and girls should get the vaccine to reduce the incidence of infection with these particular HPV strains.

It is now 2018, so such a high incidence of HPV associated cancer cases in the US is unacceptable. There needs to be a continual push to educate parents about the importance of vaccinating their children with HPV vaccine, and there also needs to be measures taken to ensure everyone has access and the opportunity to take the HPV vaccine if they deem it so.

Maybe in the hypothetical future, where the incidence for HPV associated cancer cases in the US is close to zero, we can move on to push towards taking the nonavelent Gardasil 9 vaccine, because I’m not going to lie, that is the superior HPV vaccine that covers so much more than the regular quadrivalent Gardasil vaccine.

-Daniel Gutierrez

Sources:

https://www.postandcourier.com/health/this-virus-causes-cancers-annually-but-few-complete-the-vaccine/article_331cca0c-10f8-11e8-9a24-eb3cc46bd972.html 

https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/hpv/statistics/index.htm(CDC statistics of HPV)