UK: HPV - Anger over Department of Health choice of cheaper cancer vaccine

[Guest guest]

From: Majid Katme <akatme@...>

From The Times

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article4353872.ece

July 18, 2008

Anger over Department of Health choice of cheaper cancer vaccine

Nigel Hawkes, Health Editor

The Department of Health may have saved more than

£18million a year by choosing a cervical cancer

vaccine that does not protect against genital warts.

The decision to use GlaxoKline's Cervarix

rather than Merck's Gardasil for the vaccination

campaign for 12-year-old girls was announced last

month. It was criticised by experts who said that

Gardasil was a better vaccine. Dr Colm O'Mahony,

a consultant in sexual health at Chester

Foundation Trust, said: “All the clinical

evidence pointed to Gardasil and instead they

have chosen a vaccine suitable for the Third World.”

A new analysis published in the British Medical

Journal says that a vaccine that does not protect

against genital warts needs to be £13-£21 cheaper

per dose to be as cost-effective. The study, by

health economists at the Health Protection

Agency, used the economic model employed in the

tendering process. The agreed price is

confidential, but if the department saved less

than this it made a poor choice.

In an editorial accompanying the study, Professor

Jane Kim, from the Harvard School of Public

Health, said that the Department of Health seemed

willing to forgo health benefits in return for

the lower cost of Cervarix. “Assuming 80 per cent

coverage of current 12-year-old girls in the UK

with the full three-dose vaccine series, this

price differential translates to savings of

£11.5million to £18.6million from the vaccine

price alone in the first year of the programme.”