Young boys are vaccinated with billions from the Hungarian budget

In Hungary, all the public health programs slipped because they never put funding behind them, said Professor Anna Tompa at the XXVIII. Primary Prevention Forum. Funds must be put into these cancer prevention programs before the HPV vaccine declines, he added.

In Hungary, seventh-grade girls and boys are vaccinated against the human papillomavirus (HPV) as part of a public health program.

– He told Orsolya Surján is the deputy national chief medical officer in a narrow background conversation.

When asked why there is such a difference between the participation of the two sexes, he said:

participation in boys may be lower because the vaccine was introduced to the public as a vaccine against cervical cancer, many parents of boys do not give their sons the vaccine because they do not know that HPV causes head and neck tumors in men and it is also responsible for the development of cancer of the genital organs.

They also continue to vaccinate boys from budget sources

Orsolya Surján emphasized: so far, the vaccination of boys has been carried out from European Union funds, and from 2024, the HPV vaccination of seventh-graders will be financed from the Hungarian budget for both sexes. Several billion forints are set aside in the budget every year for vaccinating 12-year-olds.

Typically, around 48,000 girls and the same number of boys are vaccinated free of charge each year.

Cervical cancer affects nearly 1,400 women in Hungary every year and, compared to the European average, still kills at an outstanding rate. This is an unsolved public health problem to this day. 90 percent of cervical cancers are caused by human papillomavirus (HPV).

In addition to screening, the possibility of the complete elimination of cervical cancer can be represented by vaccination against HPV. The widespread distribution of the HPV vaccine is justified for both sexes, since the role of HPV in boys is based on the calculations of the WHO, as well as the experiences of Australia and Sweden.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has set the goal that by 2030, a global strategy should be used to advocate for increasingly widely applicable vaccination protocols among young people, and even to provide opportunities for young adults who could not get it in the 7th grade. and the free vaccination because the parent did not request it for him.

In this regard, Orsolya Surján highlighted:

According to the deputy chief medical officer, 18-20 percent of former seventh-graders missed the vaccination because of their parents. The National Center for Public Health (NNK) is now working to ensure that those who missed out on the immunization program can also receive the vaccine.

In terms of HPV vaccination, Hungary ranks well in the Central European region, and among the Visegrad countries, we are well ahead in many areas, since in Hungary vaccination was included in the national immunization program in 2014, while only 37 of the 53 countries in the WHO European region have it – he listed Orsolya Surján.

The specialist drew attention to the fact that 90 percent of tumor-causing HPV can be prevented with the HPV vaccine, and if women also go for cervical cancer screening in addition to the vaccine, not only mortality will decrease, but also the appearance of HPV and among those rare tumors then that it only occurs in a maximum of 4 cases per 100,000 people. This is very little, we are not there now, but it is an achievable goal – stressed Orsolya Surján.

HPV-based screening is required

It is also necessary to renew the cervical cancer screening, it is necessary to switch from the current cytology-based screening to an HPV-based screening, this is what the NNK is preparing for the government. According to the plans, just as with colon cancer screening and HPV screening, the NNK will provide a reliable laboratory network, but this is a long process that is starting now, and its transformation may take years. Orsolya Surján pointed out that HPV-based screening has not yet been introduced in many European countries, and the fact that there is an openness to this in Hungary is promising.