Too late to start cervical cancer vaccinations
Dr Paula Gilvarry, chair of the Irish Medical Organisation’s public health doctors committee, said that even if adequate resources were available, it was too late to start the three-dose vaccination programme.
Ms Harney told a meeting of the Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children this week that the cervical cancer programme for first year students would start after Easter.
Ms Harney said she was aware that the Irish Medicines Board had recommended that a second dose should be given exactly two months after the first and a third six months later.
“I want to repeat the commitment that all first year girls will get the vaccine in 2010,” she said.
Dr Gilvarry said the students would need to get their second dose in June or July – when the schools were closed for the summer holidays.
“It will be impossible to implement this vaccination programme before September. And, if it is to start in September, we need extra resources,” she said.
Dr Gilvarry said they had already demonstrated to the Health Service Executive that if they took on the programme, other areas of work would have to be dropped and there was a risk to doing that.
“We are absolutely behind the vaccination programme because we realise how important it is. But, at the same time, we have to be practical and realise that we can’t actually do everything. There is only so many ways you can divide up a resource,” she said.
She pointed out that the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) booster programme had fallen way behind schedule because school doctors were administering the swine flu vaccine.
