Portuguese hospital to offer women at high risk of cancer free HPV vaccine

A Portuguese hospital has offered to give women who are at a high risk of cancer, a vaccine against HPV completely free, as reported on Thursday, June 30.

Women with a high risk for cancer will be given the HPV vaccine free of charge by the Portuguese hospital, in Porto, Sao Joao hospital, as reported by Sic.

The initiative came into force on Wednesday June 29, and the estimate of the Centro Hospitalar Universitario de Sao Joao (CHUSJ) is to vaccinate “around 100 women per year” with a three-dose vaccine which, when not subsidised, costs more than €400.

The head of the Lower Genital Tract Unit of the CHUSJ Gynaecology service, Pedro Baptista, stated:

“We are going to vaccinate women with a higher risk of having a new lesion, or of there being a progression of the most serious lesion”.

“So there is no question of enrolment in the programme or ‘I’m going to that hospital because they pay for the vaccine’, nor does this programme have retroactive effects.”

“It is a beginning and a huge first step that will hopefully inspire other institutions,” added the clinician.

“In the long term, there will be the potential reduction in the number of cervical cancers. And, while it’s difficult to measure, there are also perceived benefits of decreasing the number of procedures in this area.”

“A cervical treatment increases the risk of a preterm birth. If with one treatment you increase it, with two you increase it a lot. Especially in young women, if we can move as little as possible, we are improving their obstetric future”, concluded Baptista on the hospital’s free HPV vaccine for women with a high cancer risk.

According to Baptista, 90 per cent of Portuguese girls born after 1992 have already received the HPV vaccine.

 The news of the hospital offering free HPV vaccines to women with a high cancer risk follows reports of a new study has claimed that social pressure is not a contributing factor for people to get the Covid-19 vaccine, as reported on Wednesday June 29.

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