More than 90 percent of Taoyuan County residents are satisfied with the local government’s policy of free human papillomavirus (HPV) immunization for female junior-high school students, with about 38,900 shots to be administered to young girls by the end of this year, according to a survey released by the Taoyuan County Government’s Public Health Bureau on Friday.
The telephone-based survey, conducted from Aug. 2 to Aug. 10 by the National Taiwan Normal University’s Public Opinion Research Center at the bureau’s request, polled approximately 1,100 households in Taoyuan that have a daughter who is in junior-high school.
“The results showed that 95.3 percent of the respondents are aware of the Taoyuan government’s free HPV vaccination program, with 91 percent saying that they are content with the policy,” the bureau’s Disease Prevention Division director Lin Kuo-ning (林國甯) said.
In addition, about 93.2 percent of those polled think the vaccination program should continue, Lin said.
Lin said that since the program’s introduction on Feb. 5, nearly 25,300 students have received the first dose of the vaccine, which is given as a series of three shots to prevent infections of certain viruses that cause genital warts and might lead to some kinds of cancer.
While there are some cities and counties that offer free HPV vaccines to young girls, most of them make the vaccines available only to first-grade female junior-high school students, Lin said.
“However, Taoyuan’s vaccine program is open to female junior-high school students in all three grade levels,” Lin said, adding that those who qualify for the program “can get the vaccines at any health center and contracted medical institutions in the county, whenever they want.”
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