ACTING director, Family Health Unit, Ministry of Health and Wellness, Dr Julia Rowe Porter is again cautioning that getting the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination, now being administered to pre-teens and adolescents, is not giving young people permission to engage in sexual activity.

This has been a long-standing concern of parents who have been reluctant to give consent to their young children being administered with the HPV vaccination.

Dr Rowe Porter, who was speaking at a Jamaica Observer Monday Exchange, argued however that getting the vaccine “does not mean that if you give it you’re expecting [your children] to be loose and be sexually active”.

“It’s not giving a licence to go out and have sex now, because it is not preventing the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and syphilis and all the other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). That’s not what it’s about. It’s not heralding their sexual activity. It’s giving them the protection as children now so that [they are not affected as adults].

She pointed out that the aim of the Government’s HPV vaccination programme is mainly to prevent deadly cancers such as cervical cancer, which is more effective when given at a younger age before sex is initiated.

“We have to remember prevention. Sometimes we are a little treatment-minded and we forget that prevention is better than cure, so the vaccine is prevention. One factor that is associated with how well a vaccine works is the age you give it, so the earlier you give the vaccine the better the immune response and the longer the response lasts,” she said.

Dr Rowe Porter noted as well that pre-teens are targeted because they are not expected to be sexually active at that age.

“You want to give them before sexual activity commences because the cause is the virus, which is a sexually transmitted virus. Oftentimes our bodies eliminate it but there are some that don’t eliminate the virus; it just hangs around for years and then it develops into pre-cancers and cancers. Cervical cancer is a main one. It’s one of the leading causes of death of our women in Jamaica and it shouldn’t be at this day and age. Cervical cancer should not be killing any woman, and for Jamaica it’s in the top five cancers [that kill] women,” she said.

She pointed out that one of the benefits of getting the HPV vaccine between the age of nine and 14 is that the immune system response is better, noting that at that age, children only get one dose and this is administered before sexual activity.

In the meantime, paediatrician at May Pen Hospital and associate lecturer at The University of the West Indies (UWI), Dr Anona Griffith pointed out that HPV is a highly contagious sexually transmitted disease that can be passed on through petting and oral sex, which is why it is so it is important to administer the HPV vaccine before the initiation of sexual activity.

“You don’t know when sexual contact is initiated and there are many persons, teenagers, who are active because the thought is that penetrative sex is not the go to nowadays because you want to maintain your purity — but there is so much else to do before that and so it exposes you to these things. And some persons are unaware of the practices nowadays and the exposure to some strains that can be so virulent — meaning so aggressive — that within no time you can meet your demise,” she said.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), HPV is spread through intimate skin-to-skin contact.

Further, people can get HPV by having vaginal, anal, or oral sex with someone who has the virus, even if they don’t have signs or symptoms.

The CDC said that most HPV infections (nine out of 10) go away by themselves within two years. But sometimes HPV infections will last longer and can cause some cancers.

HPV infections, it said, can cause cancers of the cervix, vagina, and vulva; penis; anus; back of the throat (called oropharyngeal cancer), including the base of the tongue and tonsils.