Before I start with what I’m about to say be warned: this post is pro-vaccination. If you don’t believe in vaccinating your children you may want to stop reading, although I’m hoping to bring you around to my way of thinking. I respect your right to not vaccinate at all and hope you never have to regret it. For you I have 2 words though: Herd. Immunity.
Moving right along.
One of the things I love most about my group of Whine Club* girls is the frankness of our conversations. I’m not sure if it is because we’re older and really couldn’t give two hoots or whether we feel safe in our group to talk and not feel judged in any way. Cheapest therapy ever, at the very least.
One of the things we discussed at our most recent get together was whether we would get the HPV vaccine done for our kids. (This particular discussion was started by Tertia, who also sent us this link about HPV vaccination rates in the US)
If you are a boy only parent and think you don’t need to worry, keep reading. Trust me.
I have subsequently chatted to our GP, Discovery and Dischem about the vaccine and here is the down-low:
- The vaccine used in SA is Gardasil.
- The vaccine is a course, administered over 3 separate occasions in a 6 month period. (0, 2 and 6 months)
- Each injection is priced at around R1 000. (so, about R3 000 in total per person, R9 000 for a family of 3 children like mine)
- It is not available at Government Clinics (I called and asked)
- It’s not just for girls, boys are at risk of throat and anal cancer (think about what guys do with their mouths too!)
- Discovery doesn’t pay for the vaccination at all, unless it comes out of MSA (which we don’t have) and they don’t cover it in their screening and prevention benefit, but I have lodged a query about this.
Australia has a FREE vaccination program, click here for some wonderful statistics on the decline of certain cancers due to their vaccination campaign. I’ve only just scratched the surface of what is written about it, but I can only see good news. And really? A vaccine against cancer? I would totally scrape the money together for it seeing as how SA hasn’t woken up to the benefits yet.
The one thing I’ve always wondered was how I was going to explain the vaccine to my kids as I used to think that it kind of gave kids a license to have sex from a young age. Now I’m rather going to explain that it is so that they don’t get certain cancers, sex aside. There’s plenty of stuff we do that doesn’t entail actual, er, penetration.
For those of you that don’t vaccinate and still kept reading: would you, knowing that you could prevent certain types of cancer STILL not vaccinate against HPV?
How do you feel about the HPV vaccine, would you have it done?
ps: on a lighter note, I joked to Etienne the other day after his mancation about how they probably talked about sex the whole time. He claims that once guys are serious about a girl they stop discussing sex with other guys, which I find very hard to believe, but ja. If you’re a guy and you’re wondering whether girls talk about sex you should know that we talk about sex A LOT, regardless of whether we are married, single, divorced, straight or gay. It is our favourite thing to talk about. Just so you know.
pps: I see I wrote about the HPV vaccine back in 2010 as well when I was still blogging on the 24.com platform. I also see I was a lot more tactful and careful about what people thought then. Whatever.
*Whine Club used to be Book Club, but we gave up talking about books. There are six of us, we don’t live in each other’s pockets and we gather once a month for a catch-up and, you guessed it, wine. Or gin, if it’s been a bad month. Or bubbles, if it’s been a good month, not that we need an excuse