Women are strongly encouraged to get a Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination, which can effectively reduce the risk of contracting cervical cancer for sexually active individuals, a group of women’s health experts and academics said at a conference yesterday.
The conference, called the HPV Vaccine Conference, said that men should also be educated to abstain from casual sexual relationships so that their chances of becoming carriers and transmitting the virus to their loved ones would be reduced.
About 5,000 women contract cervical cancer annually in Taiwan, National Science Council Minister Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) said, adding that the HPV vaccine, which comes in three booster shots, would seriously reduce the risk for women of contracting the sexually transmitted virus.
PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING, AP
“There are many types of HPV; in Taiwan, type 16, 52, 58, 33 and 18 are the most common,” he said, adding that the vaccine, which protects against types 16 and 18, is effective for 70 percent of viruses.
Calling the vaccine “the recent hottest topic in the field of women’s health,” CJ Tseng (曾志仁), chief of Chang Gung Memorial Hospital’s obstetrics and gynecology department, said that women aged 10 to 25 should all be encouraged to receive the “surprisingly effective” vaccine.
Women over 25 should get the vaccine together with regular pap smears, which have been in use for more than 60 years and are still the golden standard for cervical cancer screening, he said.
He said that since the vaccine only works on individuals who have not been infected, the best time to get it is before a woman reaches the age of 25.
For women over 25, or who are sexually active, they could first get screened for infection to see if it would work for them, he said.
Chen said some legislators, including the Democratic Progressive Party’s Huang Shu-ying (黃淑英), had questioned the necessity of including the vaccine in the National Health Insurance Program, saying it was only aimed at sexually active women and the vaccine only had a 70 percent chance of success.
“The question is not whether the vaccine is effective — the vaccine has already been listed by the WHO as the most effective preventive measure against cervical cancer,” he said.
When the hepatitis B vaccine, which prevents liver cancer, was first developed, it was perceived as highly effective, Chen said, “and its rate was only 65 percent.”
“The question now is, does the government pay for the NT$12,000 vaccine? How much is saving a life worth?” he asked.
Chen added that while it was true that only sexually active women could contract the virus, “sexuality is part of human nature, and it is undeniable that sex is practiced by more than 90 percent of the adult population.”
But whoever pays for the shots, the experts said that to prevent cervical cancer, an integrated approach would be best.
“Sexually active women should receive pap smears annually; practice safe, committed sex; screen for the virus; and get the vaccine early,” Tseng said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods