South Dakota to provide Gardasil for free
A while ago I mentioned that Merck was hoping to replace Zocor and Vioxx with Gardasil and Januvia. John Mack at the Pharma Marketing Blog has pointed out that they've largely been successful if stock price is your measure of business success.
I think the HPV vaccine should be mandatory so the news out of South Dakota today is good to hear. Despite being somewhat of a backward state, they've taken a surprisingly progressive step by making Gardasil available to girls ages 11-18 for free.
Thinking out loud here for a minute, the $288 for the three shots isn't very expensive compared to the cost of treating cervical cancer. How many cases of cervical cancer can you prevent with the amount of money you'd spend treating even one case? Well I have no idea, but assuming it costs $100,000 to treat an average case of cervical cancer — a figure that could be wildly off-base, but I doubt it — you could vaccinate 347 girls. Assuming 10% of the population is between 11-18, and half of those are women, that leaves about 40,000 girls in that age range.
Seems like a good investment to me, even if you only take into account the money saved and not the amount of money that these women will contribute to the economy…
State Health Secretary Doneen Hollingsworth said in an average year, 25 South Dakota women are diagnosed with cervical cancer and nine of them die.
About 44,000 females will be eligible for the vaccine in the first year, Hollingsworth said. In future years, the program probably will focus on girls ages 11-12, she said.
Er, I guess I was close. 44,000 girls. The cost will go down year over year once the girls in that age range are initial vaccinated. Once the initial hump is gotten over, you've got about 5500 girls per year. Not a huge number.
South Dakota joins my particular favorite state of the union in doing this: New Hampshire.
[tags]Medicine, pharmacy, cervical cancer, South Dakota, HPV, Gardasil[/tags]
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[...] While South Dakota is focusing on girls ages 11-18, Washington D.C. is focusing on girls age 13 and under. Female students enrolling in the sixth grade would be required to show proof that they've received the vaccination. It is possible for parents to opt-out out of the vaccine, but the circumstances this would be permitted under haven't been detailed. [...]
Pingback by Requiring Gardasil in Washington D.C. :: OnThePharm — January 10, 2007 @ 10:26 am