Press Room

We welcome the decision to subsidise the nine-valent human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine for eligible females and introduce it into Singapore’s school vaccination programme from 2027. (Cervical cancer protection: Those eligible will get subsidised access to HPV9 vaccine, The Sunday Times, Oct 4)

However, HPV is not a women’s disease. It is a common sexually transmitted infection affecting both males and females, and causes not only cervical cancer but also anal, penile and oropharyngeal cancers, as well as genital warts.

There is good evidence that vaccination protects males directly. Randomised trials in young men have shown substantial reductions in vaccine-type HPV infection and genital lesions, while studies in men who have sex with men have shown protection against anal HPV infection and high-grade anal precancer. Using a large global database of US patients, researchers found that vaccinated males had a significantly lower risk of developing HPV-related cancers—including head and neck, anal, penile, and oesophageal cancers—compared with unvaccinated males. The protective association was seen across both younger adolescents and older young adults, supporting broader uptake of HPV vaccination beyond female-only strategies.

International recommendations increasingly reflect this. The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention recommends routine HPV vaccination for all adolescents, with catch-up vaccination through age 26 regardless of sex. England has offered school-based HPV vaccination to both girls and boys since 2019. The World Health Organization continues to prioritise girls where resources are limited but recommends vaccination of boys where possible and affordable.

A girls-only programme also assumes that boys will be adequately protected through herd immunity. This protection is neither equal nor dependable, particularly for men who have sex with men, who derive little benefit from female-only vaccination programmes.

Singapore has made an important investment by expanding access to HPV9. The next step should be to make HPV prevention gender neutral.

We urge the Ministry of Health to extend the national HPV vaccination recommendation to young males. Protecting boys directly is fair, evidence-based and will strengthen population level protection against HPV-related disease for everyone. If it cannot support a school-based vaccination for boys, then young men should be given the chance to receive the nine-valent HPV vaccine using their Medisave funds.

Prof. Roy Chan
President
Action for AIDS Singapore (AfA)