An indignant article by Globe and Mail columnist Christie Blatchford has raised the hackles of U of T administrators, who are defending their choice not to send a mass email informing female students about the vaccine Gardasil.
The vaccine was approved by Health Canada in July 2006 to immunize against four major strains of HPV, which cause 70 per cent of cervical cancer cases and 90 per cent of genital wart cases, and is known to increase the risk of contracting HIV. The vaccine is currently approved for females aged nine to 26.
The university’s clinic gives shots of Gardasil, which cost $400 and is not covered by OHIP for recipients older than 13.
Two Toronto physicians tried for six months to convince U of T to distribute the message.
The 42-word statement reads: “Cervical cancer is the second-most common cancer in women under age 50 today. HPV is the most common sexually transmitted infection at the U of T today. HPV can cause cervical cancer. Talk to your doctor about the new HPV vaccine.”
Dr. Rob Wagman and Dr. Raymond Tellier initially thought their proposal had been accepted when the university’s Health Services supported their plan.
“They thought it was an excellent idea,” said Wagman, who sits on U of T’s medical school faculty.
Several weeks later, Wagman and Tellier were told that U of T’s president David Naylor and VP and provost Vivek Goel had vetoed the mass emailing. Naylor and Goel both have a background in health care.
“There is no public health recommendation for mass immunization in our target age group,” said Naylor.
In a statement responding to Blatchford’s article, Goel noted that the Public Health Agency of Canada primarily recommends the vaccine for girls aged nine to 13.
“Experts agree […] that the most efficient use of the vaccine is in younger girls who are unlikely to be sexually active and therefore remain unex posed to HPV,” he wrote in an email Wednesday.
Goel added that the student health clinic website makes the information available for students, who can decide for themselves whether to pursue inoculation.
He also questioned the effectiveness of unsolicited mass emails. “Obviously, the university could send dozens of health-related messages to its students—on a range of important issues from safe sex to smoking cessation. We can only dimly imagine the resulting chorus of complaints from students about paternalistic and intrusive emails.”
The University of Ottawa has sent out a recommendation of the vaccine to both women and men, though Health Canada only finds it “favourable for prevention of infection” for females.
Tellier has pointed to the National Advisory of Immunization’s recommendation that females between 14 and 26 should also receive the vaccine.
Both he and Wagman said the message was meant to increase awareness of the cervical cancercausing virus, rather than advocate vaccination.
“We are not asking that the University of Toronto recommends the vaccine, but merely that it provides information by e-mail to its student listserv, or points to the relevant information,” said Tellier.
