Some new research indicates that aboriginal girls in Manitoba aren’t receiving the HPV vaccine nearly as much as non-aboriginal females.
The University of Manitoba’s Leigh Anne Shafer says that’s a worrying trend because the human papillomavirus, the virus the vaccine is supposed to guard against, can easily be spread.
Shafer says her chief concern is that higher numbers of aboriginal women in Manitoba could develop cervical cancer needlessly.
She adds that could have ramifications for our province too:
“So having lower vaccination uptake in Manitoba will likely impact Saskatchewan because people are mobile and people have sexual partners that are from different regions.”
Shafer says the main reason why fewer aboriginal girls are getting the vaccine seems to lie in the consent forms.
She says many girls didn’t provide their schools with the forms meaning they couldn’t get the shot.
The chief medical health officer for Saskatchewan says fortunately they haven’t experienced the same problems Manitoba has in getting consent forms from students.
Dr James Irvine says they did a quick survey over the past few days in the Keewatin Yatthe health region.
They haven’t totally finished yet, but presently they’re at a 91% HPV vaccination rate in the communities they’ve checked so far.
He says there could be a few basic reasons for that success rate:
“In many Aboriginal communities, northern communities, there has been the experience of infectious diseases, significantly, as an impact on health for years and I think there is a recognition of the value of immunizations in general.”
Irvine adds the consent-form process runs quite smoothly here in Saskatchewan which may not be the case in Manitoba.