British Teenagers Are to Get a Range of Vaccinations

British teenagers could soon be given a choice of vaccines to help protect them against such conditions as Chicken Pox to cancer, according to experts. A decision on whether or not teenagers will be immunized against the sexually transmitted human papilloma, which leads to cervical cancer, is due.

Professor Adam Finn believes that there are other vaccinations that could also benefit teenagers. He said that informed consent and parental control were issues that needed to be addressed. Currently, young children are the focal point of almost all vaccination campaigns in the UK. But by targeting teenagers, particularly for vaccinations that could help protect them from sexually transmitted infections, would be a more controversial move. At the moment, they are only offered a booster injection for Diphtheria, Tetanus and Polio (DTP) that they received in school. The government's expert advisors have still not reached a decision, although HPV will most likely be offered to 11 and 12-year-old girls.

As well as receiving HPV, teenagers could also be given a vaccine against Hepatitis B, which is given in many European countries. They could also receive a booster injection against Whooping Cough, that is offered in France, a vaccine against Chicken Pox, that is available in America, and a vaccine against Meningococcal disease, that is also offered in America. Work is also underway to help develop a vaccine against Genital Herpes.

Professor Finn, who is based at the University of Bristol, said that the number of vaccinations made available for teenagers would increase over the next ten years. He said: "Not all adolescents will be offered all the vaccines, but we need to be prepared. Up to now all our efforts at promoting the positive impact of vaccination have tended to focus on parents. Now we have a completely different ball game with teenagers, notorious for being strong willed and not always deferring to their parents, having to make up their own minds about vaccination.To avoid the issue becoming a battle-ground, we urgently need to kick-start a national debate involving schools, public health experts, parents and, most importantly, involving teenagers themselves."

Professor Finn also wants to concentrate on how best to vaccinate babies over the next 10 years, but his primary focus is on vaccinating teenagers. He wants people to engage more fully with teenagers and see what it is that they want.

According to Dr Claire Cameron, of the Health Protection Agency in Scotland, she said that parents were not against having their children vaccinated against sexually transmitted diseases, if they were given the right information to begin with. She went on to add: "If you provide the information, you get high rates of acceptability." In a study held in Glasgow in 2001-02, which looked at the different attitudes to the Hepatitis B vaccine, it found that 92% of parents were quite happy for their children to receive the vaccination. This is despite the fact that this disease is often contracted through sex and drug users sharing needles. The study looked at 11,000 11 and 12-year-olds.

Dr Loretta Brabin, a women's health specialist at the University of Manchester, said that parents would need to come to terms with the fact that their children would have more of a say over whether or not to have these vaccinations. It would also be the duty of doctors to ensure that they were being given informed consent. She said: "The more vaccines are targeted at adolescents, the more these issues will come up".

General opinion therefore shows a positive response to this government measure. Some experts welcome the new measures that are going to be made available to teenagers, and most parents are pleased with the choices that will provide their children with extra protection against disease.

Source:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6470939.stm