Uptake of the HPV vaccine among school pupils in Scotland’s most deprived areas has fallen further behind the rate in the richest areas, the latest figures show.<\/p>\n
New stats from Public Health Scotland show 90.7% of pupils in the least deprived areas had received the vaccine by S4 but that figure dropped to just 74.6% in the poorest areas.<\/p>\n
Before the Covid pandemic the difference was much smaller with both groups having more than 90% uptake.<\/p>\n
The latest PHS stats showed an “encouraging” increase in the number of first-year secondary-school pupils given the HPV vaccine last year but it noted uptake had “gradually declined over the past 10 years”.<\/p>\n
The HPV vaccine protects against an infection that can develop into cervical cancer.<\/p>\n
It is offered to S1 school pupils aged 12 and 13 to help stop the spread of Human papillomaviruses.<\/p>\n
The vaccine programme, which started in 2008, has been hugely successful, with no cervical cancer cases detected in women who have been fully vaccinated.<\/p>\n
The latest PHS figures show 72.6% of S1 pupils were given the vaccine in the last year, up from 71.5% in 2023-24.<\/p>\n
With the vaccine offered again in later years to pupils who missed it, a total of 82.9% of S4 students had received it in 2024-25.<\/p>\n
Despite a small increase last year, PHS said the vaccinations were “lower than rates seen prior to the Covid-19 pandemic”.<\/p>\n
Data revealed a growing gap in vaccination between the most deprived and least deprived areas but there were also differences by gender, ethnicity, and where pupils live.<\/p>\n
The HPV vaccine was first offered to boys in 2019 but uptake among males continues to lag behind females.<\/p>\n
By S4, coverage was 85.7% for girls and 80.3% for boys last year.<\/p>\n
The NHS Scotland website says the HPV vaccine is the most effective way to protect against HPV infection and the health risks it can cause.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Uptake of the HPV vaccine among school pupils in Scotland’s most deprived areas has fallen further behind the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":306367,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[49,48,137228,84,137227,137229,137231,137230,128297,16378],"class_list":["post-306366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-deprived-areas","tag-health","tag-hpv-vaccination","tag-human-papillomaviruses","tag-phs","tag-public-health-scotland","tag-school-pupils","tag-scotland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306366\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}