Human Papillomavirus: Vaccination

(asked on 25th February 2015) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, for what reason Public Health England is undertaking additional cost effectiveness modelling for the HPV vaccine and adolescent boys.


Answered by
 Portrait
Jane Ellison
This question was answered on 4th March 2015

In 2008 when forming its recommendation for vaccination against the human papilloma virus (HPV) in the United Kingdom the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) did not recommend vaccination of boys because the evidence from modelling undertaken by the Health Protection Agency (now Public Health England (PHE)) indicated vaccinating boys was unlikely to be cost-effective (Jit et al., 2008).

JCVI keeps the eligibility criteria of all vaccination programmes under review. In October 2013 JCVI recommended a HPV sub-committee be formed to consider a number of issues including the potential extension of the programme to include adolescent boys, because of new and emerging evidence on the association of HPV vaccine types with non-cervical cancers. JCVI requested that modelling be undertaken by PHE to re-examine the impact and cost-effectiveness of extending the HPV vaccination programme to adolescent boys in light of this evidence. The Department has also commissioned the University of Warwick to conduct an independent modelling assessment on vaccinating adolescent boys.

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