Having a healthy lifestyle and modifying your risk factors will help prevent you from acquiring the infection (HPV). Safe and healthy sexual practices and lifetime mutual monogamy is like-wise the key, so are quitting smoking and getting vaccinated.
Also, cervical cancer has a pre-cancer stage that is only detected through regular screening. Screening methods available today are Pap Smear and Visual Inspection with Acetic Acid (VIA).
Unlike other viral infections, such as measles or chicken pox, where exposure to the virus can provide lifelong protection, infection with HPV tends to evade the immune system and one doesn’t mount a good enough immune response to protect against a subsequent infection. So even if you have already been infected, say with HPV 16, it will not guarantee that you will not get the infection again in the future.
Thus enters the cervical cancer vaccine. “The vaccine works by inducing high antibodies against HPV 16 and 18” says Dr.Carrie. “up to 80 percent of women will get an HPV infection in their lifetime so women can benefit from protection afforded by the vaccine.”
To get the best immune response, the HPV vaccine is administered in three does over a period of six months, this vaccine prevents one from acquiring the HPV infection and does not cure an already existing infection or a diagnosed cancer, so it is effective 70-80 percent of the time, since it targets the strains that make up 70-80 percent of all cases. So, even if one has been vaccinated on schedule, this does not exempt her from still acquiring the disease and later on developing cancer, still with a 20-30 percent chance.
The cost of the vaccine really depends on the brand that one avails herself of and each has its own unique features and benefits. Fortunately, since the vaccine first became available, the cost has been significantly reduced by up to 60 percent,. This enables more Filipinas to avail themselves of the vaccine and to make the fight against cervical cancer winnable. Just as Pia Magalona vigilantly says in her cervical cancer awareness TVC with daughter, Maxene, “we have to fight it every way that we can!”