(AP) -- A new government report shows one in three teenage girls have rolled up their sleeves for a relatively new vaccine against cervical cancer, but vaccination rates vary dramatically between states.
The highest rates were in Rhode Island and New Hampshire, where more than half of girls ages 13 through 17 got at least one dose of three-shot vaccination. The lowest rates were in Mississippi, Georgia and South Carolina.
The federal report is the first to give state-by-state rates for the Gardasil vaccine that targets the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus. The report was released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
---
On the Net:
CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr
©2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Explore further:
Analgesics prescribed more heavily to women than to men, study finds
