Wednesday, May 16, 2007

No HPV Vaccine for New Zealand. Not until at least 2010.


No money in the budget for a vaccine proven effective against 4 strains of HPV (those 4 strains are responsible for 70% of all cervical cancers and 90% of genital warts by the way).


You can still buy it for yourself, but it will cost you $450

This decision strikes me as bizzare to say the least. I have been reading about the development of this vaccine for years and I was damn excited when medsafe approved its use in New Zealand. Its not much of a stretch to call this a cancer vaccine.

Its like we are living in a third world country sometimes.
Actually a lot of the time

Yet again, womens health care is not a priority for the government. Remember herceptin? The life saving exspensive cancer drug you could only get if you were already dying? Well now you can get a 9 week dose before you get to the terminal stage, it only took women to die, protests and ceremonial coffin burning to get Pharmac to change their minds and review the drug. What will it take this time?

3 comments:

Cavegirl Nat said...

probably will take several men dying of cervical cancer to get something done.

Unknown said...

LOL! funniest comment on my blog ever. Yes if only HPV caused penis cancer, then something would get done. No man would put up with chunks of their penis being lasered or burned off every time they had a few abnormal cells show up.

Zed said...

Actually men would wait until their penis fell off before calling the doctor, so so much for THAT theory! ;o)