Moving from theory to practice. Difficult, even when the health of one’s children is at stake. Thus, if it is true that 80% of parents know that the papilloma virus can cause some forms of cancer, although there is a vaccine capable of lowering the risk of contracting the infection, the vaccination rate is still very low. At national level, only 32% of eleven-year-old girls (cohort of those born in 2009) received the complete vaccination cycle, going from a maximum of 61% recorded in the Autonomous Province of Trento to a minimum of 5% in Friuli Venezia Giulia. The situation is slightly better for the 2008 cohort where, however, only half of the young people received the two doses of the vaccine. As regards males in the 2009 and 2008 cohorts, the percentages are only 26% and 44%. These data emerged during the national conference “Eliminating cervical cancer: balance sheets and perspectives two years after the WHO call to action” which was attended by representatives of national health institutions, Regions, clinicians and patient associations.
An opportunity to relaunch the Manifesto created two years ago by the Umberto Veronesi Foundation, the Italian Federation of Oncology Volunteer Associations, the IncontraDonna Foundation, CittadinanzAttiva, ThinkYoung, the National Youth Council, the Italian League for the Fight against Cancer and ACTO – Alliance Against the Ovarian Cancer. The signatories of the document have proposed to the Government five points of intervention to allow Italy by 2030 to become the first European country to eliminate gynecological cancer caused by the human papilloma virus, according to the objectives set by the WHO.
“This is the objective of the call to action promoted by the World Health Organization – says Walter Ricciardi, President of the Mission Board on Cancer -. Our country has all the credentials to achieve it and vaccination is the first pillar to work on to eliminate cervical cancer in our country too. Unfortunately we are still far from optimal vaccination coverage in the target population envisaged by our National Vaccine Prevention Plan. Therefore, it will be necessary to implement as much as possible the prevention interventions available today, i.e. anti-HPV vaccination and screening, to achieve the ambitious goal promoted by the WHO. In fact, the actions and policies of each State, in addition to the interaction and comparison of multi-stakeholder groups, will play a fundamental role in achieving the global goal of eliminating cervical cancer and controlling all other HPV- related”.
HPV, of which over 100 different types are recognized with different aggressiveness and ability to cause neoplasms, is responsible for practically all cervical cancers in women (99%) and part of the cancers of the anus, vulva, vagina , penis and throat. Every year in Italy there are more than 3,000 cases of cervical cancer caused by the papillomavirus. Cervical cancer is still an important cause of death for women. It is estimated that, among the new cases, in 2020 there were 1,011 women who died from this pathology. According to the latest Censis survey, the number of parents who have decided to vaccinate at least one child against Papillomavirus has increased over time, going from 33.3% in 2017 to 43.3% in 2019 (the National Vaccine Prevention Plan 2017-2019 extended the free indication to males), up to 46% today. People interested in anti-Hpv vaccination who have not yet vaccinated their children also increase compared to 2019, going from 25.4% to 28.1%, and in parallel there is a reduction in parents who claim they are not interested in vaccination ( they were 30.6% in 2017, they are 11.3% in 2022).