The Slow Uptake of the HPV Vaccine

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There are several barriers to explain why uptake of the HPV vaccine has been so slow. The age of vaccination is quite atypical, usually childhood vaccines are given to babies and younger children. Another issue is that there are parents and more conservative cultures that are generally squeamish about encouraging vaccination in young girls against what is ultimately a sexually transmitted disease.

Hints of the long campaign ahead are emerging, but all the operations so far are just drawing the eventual, full-scale battle lines. Cheap vaccinations could save millions of lives lost to cervical cancer; we ask why and where jab rates are falling. And why airlines have more money tied up in Nigeria than in the rest of the world combined.

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