Petition for boys to have HPV vaccine on nhs

[ChoudeBruxelles]

Girls currently have the hpv vaccine between ages 12-14 as it is a major cause of cervical cancer.

Hpv is also the cause of about half of throat cancers and also penile cancer. Boys who have sex with girls who are vaccinated will be protected however if they have sex with unvaccinated women or women are not protected.

Would you sign this petition for boys to be vaccinated too. petition.parliament.uk/petitions/211225

'many countries have banned this vaccine or stopped using pending further research due to adverse reactions'

Which countries? I can't find any evidence that any country has banned it or stopped using it.

I think this needs to be somewhere that is view more. Many mums of boys won't be aware of this. Can't we move it back to chat.

I think this should be backed by mumsnet.

I’ve posted back in chat about this thread

By the time someone is old to enough properly consider the advantages of having a vaccine it's likely there already had some form of sexual relationship ie too late for the vaccine to fully work.
I will pay for my son to have this vaccine if the NHS doesn't cover it by the time he's a teenager.

My understanding was it wasn’t just about preventing rare cancers in boys but also preventing the virus spreading. So if boys are vaccinated they can’t get it and therefore can’t spread it to unvaccinated females/males. I’ll definitely sign, looked into getting it down privately but prohibitively expensive for many.

Saw the link to this thread in chat and have signed.

I had the HPV vaccine when it was introduced, and I was pleased to be offered it. I see no reason why boys shouldn't be offered it too, especially if it protects them from cancers and also stops them being potential carriers.

Bump

I can’t see why it’s not given to boys, gay or not it protects against so many cancers including oral. And stops them being carriers so surely it’s a win win? Bar any side affects obviously

The reason it’s not currently given to boys is because
A) the impact on head and neck cancers is a developing field and wasn’t fully appreciated when the policy was being set. The discussion around boys was mostly about penile and anal cancer which are extremely rare.
B) do you remember the “Young girls to be given compulsory sex disease jab in school!” shock headlines when this was introduced? And that’s despite the fact that even the most draconian of parents normally accept that their precious girls will eventually grow up and have sex with another human being at some point. Given that the most obvious benefits of this vaccination were to gay men, are you really surprised that the government didn’t want to try to sell it to the parents of every thirteen year old boy in the country? Can you imagine the Daily Mail headlines?

Ten years down the line, and after Michael Douglas’s idiosyncratic awareness-raising campaign, the time may be right to revisit.