Cervical cancer vaccine available from September

The world's first vaccine against cervical cancer has been approved for use in New Zealand.

But women and girls will not be able to have the injections until September, because the vaccine was licensed at least four months earlier than expected.

Medsafe, the Government's medicines regulator, announced yesterday it had registered Gardasil for females aged 9 to 26.

This may spark debate on whether girls this young should be vaccinated against a sexually transmitted disease.

Gardasil protects against four types of human papilloma virus (HPV); two of these are associated with 70 per cent of cervical cancer and two with 90 per cent of genital warts.

The vaccine will cost about $400 for a course of three injections.

About 180 women are diagnosed with cervical cancer each year and about 60 die of it.

The Family Planning Association welcomed the licensing but foreshadowed potential controversy.

Executive director Gill Greer said the vaccine could help eradicate cervical cancer. "It has enormous potential in the developing world and in countries like New Zealand ...

"There's some discussion still to be had [on age]. There are factors related to the age of first sexual activity. Countries will vary."

Family Planning had yet to develop advice for clients on the vaccine and had no view on the age issue.

"We have such varying research findings in relation to the age of first sexual activity. Some indicate it is 17, some suggest 16, some suggest later. Often that is related to socio-economic factors, where people live and so on."

The question of whether the vaccine should be state-funded and put on the national schedule of childhood vaccination needed talking through, but Family Planning wanted access provided to something like Gardasil.

CSL NZ, the drug company which will supply the vaccine in New Zealand, said yesterday that Medsafe approved the vaccine just five months after the application was filed, which was unusually quick, even for a drug on the agency's fast-track process, which Gardasil was.

"We don't have stock available right now," said CSL product manager Joanna Hayward-Slattery.

"At this stage we don't have a firm shipment date but we're hoping to have stock to launch the product at the beginning of September."

CSL would promote the vaccine to doctors in line with advice from the United States Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

A CDC immunisation committee last month recommended that females from 11 to 26 could be given Gardasil regardless of whether they had an abnormal cervical smear, a positive HPV test or genital warts; that 9-year-old and 10-year-old girls be vaccinated at the discretion of their doctors, and that the injections be added to the federal Vaccines for Children programme.

If Gardasil is put on the New Zealand schedule, it is unlikely to be until 2008. The Health Ministry may consider next month whether to do this.

Once the vaccine goes on sale, women who have been sexually active will still need regular smear tests, whether vaccinated or not, because Gardasil does not protect against all cervical cancer-linked HPV types and the length of protection is unknown.