The HPV vaccine was not an option when Isabelle Gachet was a teenager in the 1990s. “At the time, it didn’t exist. We didn’t talk about it at all,” says the 43-year-old nurse, who was diagnosed with Precancerous lesions linked to a papilloma virus two years ago, during a control smear.
This Tuesday, Emmanuel Macron announced the implementation of a free and widespread vaccination campaign in universities for 5th grade students. The goal is to eradicate the papillomavirus, responsible for 6,000 new cases of cancer a year.
In France, the HPV vaccine has only been recommended for girls since 2007, and only from January 1, 2021 for boys. Thus, the vaccination coverage rate is only 37% for girls and 9% for boys, while the 10-year strategy for cancer control 2021-2030 targets a target of 80% in seven years.
Isabelle Gachet, a 40-year-old Dordogne who had gone to see her gynecologist for abnormal bleeding, had to undergo a conization of the cervix. This is a minor surgery that is supposed to remove a part of the cervix. Looking back, she is convinced that she was infected with an STI (sexually transmitted infection) by her husband twenty years earlier. At that time, we had to remove a condyloma (genital warts) with a laser.
“It would have saved me a lot of trouble”
“Luckily it was caught in time, but the doctors warned me that the virus would never go away. Now every year I get a checkup and it’s a bit like the sword of Damocles. I know that precancerous cells can come out. out of the blue,” says the mother of two teenagers, who was quick to bring up the issue with her two teenage daughters.
The two girls, ages 12 and 15, were vaccinated as soon as the vaccine was offered. “I heard people say that it is useless. As a teenager, you may have this impression, but I am proof that it can be useful later on: it still helps to avoid a lot of worries as you get older.
“Today I can say it: I wish they had offered this vaccine to me or my mother when I was young. It would have saved me a lot of trouble and I probably wouldn’t have developed this filth.” she adds.
“I told my daughter that she definitely had to do it”
Nor had the question ever arisen for Dorothée Hirard, a 39-year-old waitress from Arbanats (Gironde), before she was diagnosed with a grade 3 (high grade) papillomavirus infection in 2011, when she was 27 years old. “I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to have children after that, but it wasn’t like that. They just gave me a laser to remove all the lesions,” says the mother of three, who is now monitored every year. Her 13-year-old son has just been vaccinated, sensitized by her mother’s story.
Magali Oliveira also regrets not having had access to the vaccine in her youth. In 2020, this 50-year-old woman developed severe stomach pains and an abnormally swollen abdomen. A smear revealed at that time to the Toulouse cashier, a mother of two children, that she was positive for the papilloma virus. Fortunately for her, there is still time to proceed with a hysterectomy, that is, the total removal of the uterus.
A cumbersome process that will mark the beginning of a long series of health problems. “It can be very painful. For my part, I don’t want to have children anymore, so it’s still fine, but I can imagine the suffering that can be for a young woman to whom this is announced,” says the fifty-year-old.
“This vaccine, I immediately told my 15-year-old daughter that she absolutely had to do it,” says the mother, who “didn’t need to talk much” to convince her:
“At her age she didn’t think much about it. She is a teenager who makes her life small and doesn’t think about it, which is normal. I told him ‘it’s to protect you’”.
It’s not just a women’s issue
And the papilloma virus is not just a women’s thing. This sexually transmitted virus can also affect men and cause cancer of the penis, anus, or cancers of the ENT sphere (throat, mouth, etc.). This is what happened to Thierry Moyer in June 2019. After a persistent sore throat, this manager of a steakhouse in Cagnes-sur-Mer (Alpes-Maritimes) discovered a lump in his throat, which turned out to be a tonsil cancer caused by a papilloma virus.
“I was surprised by the diagnosis. As a 51-year-old man, I didn’t feel worried,” Thierry Moyer told BFMTV.com, for whom this virus “affects women more” and “above all in a benign way.” “.
Chemotherapy, radiotherapy… This father is forced to undergo three months of harsh treatment that makes him lose 25 kilos. Three years later, he came out very weak but still does not know “how he became contaminated.”
“The doctors told me that it was probably related to a sexual relationship, but I’m not very given to running from one place to another, so I don’t know… It’s very difficult to trace the origin of the contamination,” says the man. that he had never heard of the HPV vaccine before he got cancer.
“Several reasons explain the low vaccination coverage in France,” Sophie Vaux, coordinator of the vaccination coverage monitoring program at Public Health France, told AFP. One of the first is the cost of the vaccine, between 95 and 116 euros. If 65% is reimbursed by the Health Insurance and the rest is covered by the complementary mutual, the advance of costs or the absence of mutual may slow down.
In addition, a recent study by Public Health France showed in particular that vaccination was lower in the poorest populations. In France, unlike other countries, vaccination against HPV infections is called “opportunistic” in the sense that it is the adolescent or her parents who make an appointment with the doctor for vaccination.
Source: BFM TV
