Genital warts is a disease that affects millions. There are statistics out there that state that anywhere between 500,000 and one million new cases of the disease are diagnosed each year. This is a disease that has the potential to cause cancer and even cause obstructions, making sex, defecating, and urinating very difficult. This is not a disease that you can simply ignore, yet many people are unknowingly contracting as well as spreading the disease. For the first time, we can protect ourselves and our children from this disease with the use of a genital warts vaccine.

The Genital Warts Vaccine

The genital warts vaccine has been all over the news and most doctors are pushing it heavily. The vaccine is recommended routinely for girls who are 12 or 13 and it can be administered to women as old as 26 who have not been diagnosed with the disease or who have not previously had the vaccine.

There are hundreds of different strains of HPV and the genital warts vaccine targets the strains that are known to cause cervical cancer and genital warts. For this reason, the vaccine is known not only as the genital warts vaccine, but also the cervical cancer vaccine. Through research it has been proven that the vaccine is very effective at protecting women from contracting HPV, though it is not as effective for women who have already been exposed to the disease. The genital warts vaccine is only useful in women who do not yet have the disease, but will not do anything for those that have already been exposed.

While the vaccine will keep most people who have not been exposed from getting genital warts, the same may not be true for cervical cancer. While the vaccine protects against many of the strains that cause cervical cancer there are 30% of cervical cancers that are not covered by the vaccine. Regardless there are going to be a lot of women protected by this vaccine that may not have been protected otherwise. Even with the genital warts vaccine women will still need to have regular pap smears to check for cervical cancer.

Those that have to pay retail for the genital warts vaccine will find that it usually runs about $375 for the whole series, though most insurance companies are covering the vaccine. It has been approved by the FDA and it is recommended and considered safe by the CDC. Most doctors will offer the vaccine to families who cannot afford it free of charge to ensure that the young girls are as protected from the disease as possible.