It doesn’t take off. Of the 632,000 fifth grade students in public middle schools, only 61,400 have been vaccinated against the papillomavirus since the start of the school year, according to information from France Interwhich obtained the first figures from regional health agencies.
While a vaccination campaign has been taking place in 7,000 colleges since the fall, the government had set a target of 30% vaccination. The results are not up to par: only one student in ten has received the first dose of vaccine, out of the two necessary to obtain complete protection.
Catholic teaching wants “better” supervision of vaccination
The 180,000 middle school students in the private sector were not invited to the campaign, because of the refusal of Catholic education. Be careful, however: these figures do not take into account the vaccination carried out on adolescents by city doctors. Each year, around 6,400 new cases of cancer occur due to human papillomaviruses.
The vaccine provides protection against nine types of papillomavirus. Vaccination has been recommended for around fifteen years among adolescent girls aged 11 to 14, and was opened in 2021 to boys of the same age. The second dose of vaccine will be delivered during the third trimester.