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Wed 01 Jan 2010Girls must get three cancer vaccine doses, says expert
IRELAND WILL have to work hard to ensure girls being offered the cervical cancer vaccine get all three doses to guarantee maximum protection against strains of the virus causing most cases of the disease, one of the co-inventors of the vaccine said yesterday.
Prof Ian Frazer said that in Australia, where human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccinations began in 2007, data from some states shows there has been about an 80 per cent uptake of all three doses among schoolgirls, but that among those aged 18 to 26, uptake of all three had been just 40 per cent after three years.
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