THE island’s director of public health does not believe a planned vaccination against cervical cancer needs to be available to 12- to 13-year-old boys.

But the British Dental Health Dental Foundation said there was a case for including  teenage boys in the vaccination as the number of young people affected by mouth cancers had increased significantly in the last few years. The call comes after a large-scale US study, of 46,000 mouth cancer cases, found that deaths caused by the HPV virus were up by a third over the last 30 years.

The vaccine is due to be introduced here in September for girls only. Guernsey director of public health, Dr David Jeffs said it was theoretically possible that HPV, which causes 95% of cervical cancers, could also cause cancer of the mouth. People who use alcohol and tobacco were 30 times more likely to develop cancer of the mouth than non-smokers who only drank moderately, he said.