Teen HPV Shots Instill Fear And Worry Among Parents

The HPV vaccine has been developed to fight all strains related to the human papillomavirus (HPV), which can cause among all things, serious illnesses like cervical cancer to genital and anal warts. However, parents were worried and mystified at the same time about this particular vaccine because apparently, the vaccine has not been connected to any sort of side effect.

Dr. Dennis Cunningham, an infections specialist for the Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio is concerned that a helpful vaccine was deemed unsafe for teens by their worried parents. He stated that around 12,000 women in the U.S. alone were diagnosed with cervical cancer annually and plenty of said cases were attributed to HPV infection.

The rise of cervical cancer patients prompted the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to suggest that HPV vaccines should be administered to all girls from the ages 11 to 12. Teenage girls and young women were encouraged to undergo a follow-up vaccination.

A new study which was published both online and in print reports that between the years 2008 and 2010, an increasing amount of girls were immunized against HPV. 13 to 17 year-olds who were not informed of the vaccine declined from 84% to a good 75%. Nevertheless, plenty of parents were still stubborn in terms of giving their daughters HPV vaccinations, the main reason being safety concerns.

Cunningham and another physician, Dr. Paul Darden from the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center in Oklahoma City both suggested that maybe these parents get plenty of anti-HPV propaganda online. Darden commented that there’s “a lot of unreliable vaccine information out there.”

Common side effects linked to HPV vaccines are similar to other vaccines like dizziness, discomfort at the site of the injection and slight fever. Darden recommended that parents should go look for information regarding HPV vaccines in dependable sites like the official CDC website or discuss it with their daughter’s physician.

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