Boys aged 12-13 in Northern Ireland are to be offered human papillomavirus vaccination to protect them against HPV-related cancers, the Department of Health in Belfast has announced.

From September this year the HPV vaccine will be offered to all boys in year nine at school. In July 2018 it was announced that the HPV vaccine will be extended to boys aged 12 to 13 years in England. The vaccine has been offered to girls for some time.

The DH is also replacing the faecal occult blood (FOB) test with the faecal immunochemical test (FIT) as the primary screening test for bowel cancer in the Bowel Cancer Screening Programme (BCSP) in Northern Ireland in a bid to increase uptake rates and to detect more cancers earlier.