Are schools really the best place for Gardisil?

The Canadian government, and in turn several provincial governement, have created a policy which distributes the HPV vaccine to girls in school for free. This allows many girls who could otherwise not afford this vaccine, a chance to protect themselves. However, it is up to the school board to decide whether or not they will provide this service in their schools, not the students. If a girl is interested in getting the vaccine, and her school offers it, she simply has to get a permission slip signed by her parents. What happens though, when a girl wants the vaccine, but goes to a school that does not agree with the policy, and has rejected the Gardisil vaccine? The Catholic School Board in Halton, ON, voted against providing the HPV vaccine to grade 8 girls in their schools (www.globeandmail.com). Halton trustees also voted to have the board increase its efforts to impress students that abstinence before marriage was an important feature of the Catholic faith (www.globecampus.ca).

Six out of twenty school boards in Alberta have also rejected the vaccine. These school boards believe that providing a vaccine for a sexually transmitted disease goes against the values and morals that the Catholic faith preaches to the students. Alberta Health spokeswoman Shannon Haggerty issued a statement telling parents not to worry, and that if their children attends a school which has opted not to provide the vaccine, they will not be forgotten. The provincial government is working to make sure their are alternatives for those girls, ie. a place where they can get the vaccine for free like other students their age, such as free clinics (http://ca.news.yahoo.com).

Is the school really the best place to distribute the Gardisil vaccine, or would free clinics be a better choice? One the one hand, the majority of girls attend school (with the exception of home-schooled children), therefore it would be a convenient location for them to get vaccinated. On the other hand, schools are not clinics, and different school boards teach different values and morals. If a girl from a Catholic school that has rejected Gardisil wants to get vaccinated, she may face a moral dilema, as well as stigma from her peers. If all girls had the choice to get the vaccine from a free clinic, perhaps this wouldn't be such an issue...

References
www.globeandmail.com (2008). Catholic school board rejects HPV vaccine.
www.globecampus.ca (2008). Catholic school board rejects HPV vaccine.
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/081013/national/alta_hpv_backlash_1 (2008). Alberta tries to deal with Catholic backlash against HPV vaccine in schools.