Papillomavirus: vaccination of college students “not as high as we would like”, admits the Minister of Health

The vaccination of 5th grade middle school students against papillomaviruses “is not as high as we would like”, declared the Minister of Health on Wednesday, while welcoming “a first step” at the end of which some 150,000 should be vaccinated students.

“We will probably have 100,000 to 150,000 5th grade students – probably more because many will have been vaccinated in the city – who would not have been vaccinated last year. And that means that they will not have cancer in 20-30 years,” Aurélien Rousseau told journalists on the sidelines of a trip to a Parisian pharmacy on Covid and flu vaccination. Several studies have in fact shown its effectiveness in real life to protect against several genital and ENT cancers.

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The campaign, promised at the start of 2023 by President Emmanuel Macron, was launched in colleges from the beginning of October. Noting that the injection of the first dose “will end at the end of next week” with the school holidays, the Minister of Health and Prevention assured that he “will give all the figures”. “If we are at 100,000, 150,000 or 200,000”, that will be as many young people vaccinated “as we did not have last year, so it is a first step. I have no difficulty in recognizing that there are things to adapt (...) But I think that the objective of 150,000 that we had set ourselves, we will be there,” he estimated. .

At the beginning of September, the objective announced by the Ministry of Health for this first edition was at least 30% of students vaccinated in middle school, or nearly 190,000 out of nearly 632,000 5th grade students in public middle schools. “I don’t think we will be there,” Aurélien Rousseau admitted to AFP at the beginning of November, already deeming “tenacity” necessary. Only 61,400 students have been vaccinated against the papillomavirus since the start of the school year, according to information from France Inter on Tuesday, based on initial partial feedback from regional health agencies.

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Getting back into the habit of vaccinating at school “takes time. Hence the work of everyone at their level, to explain, to repeat. We must always repeat, that’s also prevention,” said Agnès Firmin Le Bodo, Minister Delegate for Health Professions present alongside Aurélien Rousseau on Wednesday. This is in fact the first time that a vaccination campaign has been organized in schools since the hepatitis B fiasco in 1998, which had a lasting impact on confidence despite scientific evidence that it did not cause sclerosis in plates.

The vaccination campaign for middle school students in 5th grade against human papillomaviruses, the cause of numerous cancers (uterus, ENT, etc.), concerns all public middle schools. Voluntary private establishments can participate.

At the end of October, the general secretariat of Catholic education recommended to Catholic colleges under contract to “suspend” this campaign, for “precautionary reasons” after the death of a schoolboy who suffered a fall following post-vaccination discomfort. .