Misinformation Regarding Medical and Social Effects of HPV Vaccination

HPB rolled-out the national school-based HPV vaccination programme for Secondary 1 female students on 1 April this year. As of 26 April 2019, 25 schools have been covered by the programme. Ninety-three percent of the students in these schools have opted for the vaccine.

HPV vaccination has been shown to be safe and effective, and is recommended by the World Health Organization and leading health agencies for the prevention of cervical cancer, a serious disease and one of the top-10 cancers among women in Singapore.

MOH and HPB will continue to highlight the benefits, importance and safety of HPV vaccination to parents and students through public and targeted education programmes. Parents will also be provided with an information package prior to the school visit for vaccination. This includes a factsheet on HPV vaccination, a brochure on the risk and prevention of HPV, and a letter providing information on the HPV school-based programme.

Mr Speaker, I thank the Senior Minister of State. First off, I would like to ask the Senior Minister of State if she could provide information on part three of my question on the mistrust engendered by the anti-vaccination movement; also a question that my hon colleague Dr Chia had raised earlier.

The second follow-up question is on the numbers that the Senior Minister of State provided. She mentioned that 93% of students in the 25 schools have already opted for the vaccination; whether the Ministry had tracked the reasons why the 7% had decided not to.

My third and final supplementary question has to do with the social effects that some parents have talked about, that the HPV vaccination would lead to promiscuous behaviour by their children, because they think that with the vaccination, they can avoid cancer. Now, whether or not the Ministry would be looking at how to educate parents as well as students on this?

Regarding the second question on why a small percentage did not opt in for the HPV vaccination, first, let me say that when parents do not give their consent for the vaccination, we actually contact them to provide them with information of the benefits and importance of HPV vaccination, so that they can make an informed decision.

As regards the reasons, most of them either say that their daughters had already taken the HPV vaccination or that they prefer to bring them to the primary care clinics themselves for the vaccination. We have a small percentage – less than 1% of parents – who actually are concerned with the safety and side effects of the vaccine. But as I have said, we do contact them to provide them with the information on HPV vaccination.

Regarding misinformation on vaccination in terms of the safety, the efficacy, adverse events or social effects, is common on the Internet. Parents are encouraged to check and refer to reliable and verifiable sources of information, such as on our HealthHub, which is a one-stop health portal, to get information on health contents, as well as through websites of the World Health Organization, the US CDC, the European Medicine Agency's website and so on.

What is also important is that parents ought to actually seek the advice or speak to the doctors who will be best placed to give them advice and provide accurate information.

For the school-based HPV vaccination programme, as I have said, parents are provided with the information package which will include information on the safety and efficacy of the HPV vaccine. If they have queries, they can contact us through HPB's healthline.

With regard to the third question on social effects of HPV vaccination, our scan of studies as well as evidence elsewhere, shows that there is no evidence that those females who have got HPV vaccine or are vaccinated will have sex earlier or will have more partners than unvaccinated females.