Most doctors will welcome the Government’s announcement of a vaccination programme for girls but hope that the vaccine will be made available to other age groups earlier than announced. Many doctors also believe that, despite the increased expense, boys and men should be vaccinated.

Cervical cancer affects about 4,000 women annually in the United Kingdom, of whom about 1,200 die. The incidence and death rate will have fallen since these figures were announced. The cancer is one of the malignancies spread by a virus, in this instance the wart virus known as the human papillomavirus, HPV.

The virus, when it affects the cervix, is spread by sexual intercourse. Although more than 70 per cent of women of reproductive age show evidence of having been infected with HPV, only in a very small minority does the virus remain persistently on the cervix. Its presence can be detected by viral cultures.

There is evidence that early infection, which is likely to lead to a persistent infection and possibly malignancy, is more likely to result from sexual intercourse in teenage years and to occur if HPV cultures are persistently positive in a woman aged over 30. Risk of cervical cancer is therefore related to the age at which a woman first has intercourse as well as her lifetime number of sexual partners. The sexual history of a woman’s partners is also highly relevant and so is whether the woman is a smoker.

There is often a long interval between initial infection and the development of malignant or pre-malignant changes on the cervix. The most common age for a woman to die of cancer of the cervix is her early fifties.

As the age at which girls become sexually active is falling, the early vaccination of girls is essential if the death rate is to be reduced.

However careful they are, this is no guarantee that their partners will have been equally circumspect. This is one of several reasons why many doctors believe that boys should also be vaccinated before puberty. Cervical cancer isn’t the only malignancy that is caused by HPV. The same types of the virus can be shown to be the likely origin of penile, anal and oral cancer.

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