An eighth grader in Lianyungang city became the province’s first recipient of the human papillomavirus or HPV as Jiangsu has started to offer the vaccine to girls between 9 and 15 years old on Wednesday.
All female students 15 years old or younger who have not yet been vaccinated can get the HPV vaccine free.
The HPV vaccine can block the continuous infection of high-risk HPV and effectively reduce the incidence of cervical cancer and precancerous lesions.
Popularizing the HPV vaccine among school-age people is an effective measure to prevent and control cervical cancer.
Despite cervical cancer being preventable through routine annual physical examinations, it's better to be vaccinated.
Cervical cancer involves a malignant tumor that seriously threatens women's health. Long-term presence of high-risk HPV is a necessary condition for the occurrence of cervical cancer.
More than 70 percent of cervical cancers are caused by type 16 and 18 HPV infections.
Domestically developed vaccines protect against both type 16 and 18 HPV infections, the two most common virus strains responsible for cervical cancer.
According to the World Health Organization, cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer in women. In China, there were approximately 106,000 cases of cervical cancer and 48,000 deaths from the disease in 2018.
