Adolescents aged 12-14 can have their two injections for £155 each, while those aged 15 and above can have the three injections they need for £455, a spokesperson for Lloydspharmacy’s parent company McKesson UK told C+D yesterday (November 27).

McKesson UK hopes “to roll this service out to more stores in 2020”, they added.

Convenient locations

The private service, which was introduced on Monday (November 25), is available from 13 branches located close to universities. It made the decision to launch the service in pharmacies near universities following an increased demand for the vaccine “particularly among young people”, according to Anna Ruthven, head of services at McKesson UK.

The branches are located in Lancashire, South Yorkshire, Greater Manchester, Cheshire, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Leicestershire.

Offering the vaccination in community pharmacies gives customers “the opportunity to get vaccinated at their convenience”, Deep Patel, healthcare services manager at Lloydspharmacy, said.

McKesson UK already offers HPV vaccines from MASTA, its community-based travel clinics across the UK.

Ms Ruthven said that by making the service accessible within its community pharmacies, it hopes that “more people will seek to protect themselves”.

“An opportunity”

Offering the vaccination within community pharmacy is “an opportunity” for Lloydspharmacy “to demonstrate that our pharmacists can play an even bigger role in helping their communities to better manage their health by delivering more services”, Mr Patel said.

Ms Ruthven added that the more trust Lloydspharmacy can build in the service, “the more vaccinations we will be able to administer and the cases of HPV, and more specifically cervical cancer, will continue to fall”.

In October, representatives of the large multiples and smaller chains called on the government to commission community pharmacy to deliver more vaccinations, including HPV.

NHS England is currently considering whether more vaccinations could be delivered by community pharmacists as part of a vaccinations and immunisations review it will publish later this year.

Boots has offered the HPV vaccine for women aged 18-44 since 2009. In 2017, the multiple extended the service to boys and girls aged 12-16.

At the time, the NHS scheme did not include boys aged 12-13, but in September this year it was rolled out to also cover this group.