A NORTH health clinic is to start offering a potentially life-saving new jab to schoolgirls ahead of the Government’s own vaccination programme. And the first to be immunised will be the clinic director’s own daughters. From this autumn, all 12 and 13- year-old girls — in school year eight — will be offered a vaccination to protect them against cervical cancer. Public health experts believe the national immunisation programme will save the lives of hundreds of women who develop the disease after being infected with the sexually-transmitted human papilloma virus — HPV — the cause of 99 per cent of all cases. Some parents have voiced fears however that vaccinating such young girls could encourage sexual promiscuity. Mum-of-three Sarah McLain, who runs the Centaurus private health care clinic in Teesside, says that’s rubbish and it’s vitally important to protect our girls against what is the second most common women’s cancer in Europe after breast cancer. Sarah said: “This is a myth that needs to be dispelled. They are targeting 12-year-olds first as that’s the time when their immune systems are very receptive and they will get the benefit before they become sexually active. “HPV is spread not only through penetrative sex, but also skin-to-skin, so it can be transmitted through heavy petting.” She will be personally immunising her own daughters, Alex, 23 a student at Northumbria University, Fiona, 20, a student in London, and Catriona, 10, who is at school in Yarm, Teesside. “The very least I can do — for the price of insuring a car — is to give them an injection that will hopefully prevent them from getting cancer,” says Sarah. However, safety concerns were raised this week by the sudden deaths of two girls in Austria and Germany following their immunisation with another cervical cancer vaccine, Gardasil, made by Merck & Co. One and a half million patients have been vaccinated with Gardasil in Europe and no causal relationship has been established between the deaths and the vaccine. It has not yet been decided whether Gardasil or Cervarix will be used by the UK Government. Sarah, who has already taken delivery of the Cervarix vaccine manufactured by Glaxo Smith Kline, believes many parents, whose daughters may not be in the first wave of the Government’s immunisation programme, will opt to pay privately to ensure they’re protected. For, although the NHS vaccine is first being offered to 12 to 13- year-olds, it will take three years for a catch-up strategy to take effect. It will be 2011 before all girls aged between 12 and 18 will have been vaccinated. Some mums, like Sarah, who have daughters older than this may wish to speak to their GP about the possibility of a free vaccination or decide to pay for it privately. Sarah said: “Under the Government’s plans some girls will have left school before the catch-up programme gets to them so what happens then? “What we’re doing is offering it to people who can’t get hold of it and want to use it to protect themselves and their children. You can be exposed to HPV at any time of life and many newly- single, older women may also want to take advantage of it.” Privately, the vaccine costs £150 per jab and three vaccinations are required one and five months apart, which offers five years’ protection. A spokesman for Cancer Research UK welcomed the Government programme as “an exciting step towards preventing cervical cancer in the UK” but said the impact would not be felt for many years and that cervical screening would remain vital in preventing the disease. | 
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