While More Teens Are Getting Vaccinated According To The CDC, Bachmann Stands Behind The HPV Vaccine As ‘Ravaging’ Girls

(HealthDay News) — Although the number of teens getting three new recommended vaccines is growing, there’s still room for improvement, government researchers report.

The three vaccines were added to the recommended list of vaccines in 2005 through 2007. They include the TdaP vaccine, which shields against tetanus, diptheria and whooping cough (pertussis); the meningitis vaccine (MenACWY) and the human papillomavirus (HPV) shot for girls, which prevents about 70 percent of cervical cancers and vaginal warts.

Overall, the proportion of 13- to 17-year-olds who were up-to-date on these three shots rose from 10 percent in 2006 to almost 42 percent by 2009, the team from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found.

“On the good side, vaccination coverage is increasing,” said lead researcher Shannon Stokley, from the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

“But, unfortunately coverage for HPV is starting to level off,” she said. “We are not seeing as big an increase in coverage as we see with the other vaccines.”

However, HPV is transmitted via sexual contact and, “we feel it’s really important to get the vaccine as early as you can, to make sure girls are protected at the time they may become sexually active,” Stokley said. “The point of vaccination is to protect yourself before you are at risk.”

Recently, a CDC panel recommended the HPV vaccine for boys. “We are hoping there will be strong uptake for boys,” she said. Vaccinating boys helps stop the virus from spreading to girls and also shields boys from throat and anal malignancies.

Michele Bachmann is still defending her oppositionto the vaccine that prevents HPV, the leading cause of cervical cancer. At a campaign event in Sheldon, Iowa on Monday night, she sympathized with a mother who believes her daughter Jessica, now 16, has been debilitated by headaches, pains and seizures brought on by the vaccine three years ago and can no longer attend school.

“Michele, on behalf of myself and a lot of other mothers that have a child that’s sick from the Gardasil vaccine, I would like to thank you for the attention that you brought to it,” Julie Wepple said, according to the Des Moines Register.

Bachmann thanked Wepple for bringing up the vaccine issue. “Parents have to make that decision for their kids because it isn’t the schools that are going to follow up with Jessica,” she said. “It isn’t the schools that live with Jessica every day. It’s Jessica who’s having to have her body live with the ravages of this vaccine.”

For months Bachmann’s campaign has been after Rick Perry, who in 2007 mandated that all young girls in Texas receive the vaccine–and later said he made a mistake.

Central to the debate was Texas lobbyist Mike Toomey, who served as chief of staff for Perry for two years and lobbied for Merck, Gardasil’s maker. Bachmann alluded to her opponent’s ties to the drug company again on Monday night.more from the huffingtonpost