Push for girls to be vaccinated against cervical cancer

By Grace Chua, The Straits Times, 11 May 2012

LAST year, real-estate agent Angeline Tan, 44, got her three teenage daughters vaccinated against cervical cancer after reading about the immunisation.

She said: 'It's more effective for younger girls, and we thought prevention is better than cure.'

But her daughters are in the minority. Just 4 per cent of women here are protected against the sixth-most common women's cancer, which kills 70 here each year on average.

The Singapore Paediatric Society has thus launched a public education drive this month, Cervical Cancer Awareness Month, to raise awareness of the vaccine. It will put TV infomercials and get letters on the disease sent out to parents of teenage girls in schools. Eventually, it wants to push for the vaccine to be put on the school immunisation programme.

The Health Ministry's stance is to promote Pap smear screening, rather than include the vaccine in a national vaccination scheme, although it urges primary-care doctors to recommend the vaccine for those eligible.

If not made compulsory, the vaccine should at least be made an option that parents can go for, urged Singapore Paediatric Society president Anne Goh, a senior consultant at KK Women's & Children's Hospital.

Offered here since 2006, the vaccines Cervarix and Gardasil give protection against the two types of human papillomavirus responsible for 70 per cent of cervical cancers.

Dr Goh said 10- to 14-year-old girls, who are generally not sexually active, respond best to the vaccination.