Cardiff City FC team up with Cardiff and Vale UHB for HPV vaccine campaign!

Cardiff City FC Community Foundation has teamed up with Cardiff and Vale University Health Board to promote the importance of a vaccine that offers vital protection against several types of cancer.

The human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine is offered for free to all children aged 12 and 13 in Year 8 of secondary school. It has proved highly effective at reducing the risk of getting HPV, a group of more than 100 viruses that are usually passed on through skin-to-skin contact.

Most people who become infected with HPV will clear the virus from their body and won’t become unwell, but for others it can cause genital warts or even develop into some types of cancer including cervical cancer in women and head and neck cancers that are most common in men.

HPV usually has no symptoms, which is why it is so easy to pass on. More than 70% of people who haven’t had the HPV vaccine will get HPV at some point in their life.

But to date the vaccine has proved very effective. Since it was introduced in 2008, it has reduced cervical cancer rates by almost 90% in women in their 20s.

Every spring, Cardiff and Vale UHB’s School Nursing Immunisation Team visits schools across the region to administer the HPV vaccine to Year 8s, along with those in Year 9, 10 and 11 who missed put in Year 8. The full list of dates can be found here.

To help promote the importance of the vaccine, players from Cardiff City FC were on hand to help create a short promotional video which will be shared widely on social media and other channels.

Forward Kion Etete and defender Mark McGuinness were among those to contribute to the video from the Mens First Team, as well as striker Rhianne Oakley from the Women's First team.