UK health officials in cancer vaccine fight

When British health officials weighed the benefits of the two cervical cancer vaccines, they concluded that Cervarix from GlaxoSmithKline provided the best value for the money. And that decision swiftly triggered a fierce dispute over the relative value of Gardasil, which guards against two other strains of the cancer and also protects girls from genital warts.

"Genital warts is the second most common sexually transmitted infection in the UK after Chlamydia," said the Family Planning Association. "Selecting the Gardasil vaccine would've been a huge preventative measure in terms of health and financial costs to the NHS."

"The contract has been awarded for the vaccine that scored best overall against a number of pre-agreed criteria and offers best overall value to the NHS," responded the government. "The vaccination program has always been about cervical cancer protection, irrespective of which vaccine was chosen. We chose the vaccine that best met this need."

- read the article from the BBC

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