A new study found that only Virginia, Rhode Island and Washington D.C. have created laws that require young adults to have the human papillomavirus (HPV).
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), HPV vaccines could protect people from HPV infection and the health problems associated to it. It is often recommend to women to protect themselves from cervical cancer and to men to lower risk of developing anal cancer and genital warts. The ideal age of receiving the immunization is by 11 or 12-years-old, prior to being sexually active with another person.
However, unlike other vaccines such as hepatitis B and varicella, HPV is not mandated in other states. For instance, 36 states and D.C. require hepatitis B while 38 states and D.C. require varicella. All states require children to be vaccinated against chickenpox before attending to school.
"Support for the vaccination has consistently emphasized recently that this should be treated like any other vaccination," Jason L. Schwartz, study co-author from the Princeton University in New Jersey, told Reuters Health. "We find that the public health community is not following its own good advice, there are clear differences compared to these other vaccines."
The researchers were unable to pinpoint the exact reason why other states are not requiring HPV vaccinations. Their assumption was that it could be the controversy surrounding the vaccine prior to approval in 2006 when many doctors felt that it was too early to release it to the public.
The HPV vaccine became controversial again in 2011 when former Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann claimed that HPV vaccine could cause mental retardation, the Washington Post reported.
Dr. Jessica Kahn, a professor of pediatrics at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center who is not involved in the study, believes that the HPV vaccination rate could improve if more states would make HPV vaccine a requirement with more doctors supporting it. To date, only 38 percent and 18 percent of women and men, respectively, in the United States had completed all the three doses of the vaccine, according to HealthDay News.
The study was published in the July 14 issue of the Journal of American Medical Association.
