The vaccine may not become available in the U.K. for another 18 months due to the cost. A committee that sets U.K. vaccine policy will consider today whether the national health system will pay. But the UK’s healthcare budget is running a deficit and the panel, which has been debating reimbursement for three years, last September decided it’s unlikely to justify the cost.

Vaccinating all 365,000 11-year-old girls in the U.K. would cost 88 million pounds, buthe U.K. National Health Service’s annual budget is about 100 billion pounds. And here’s a sad irony: widespread vaccination may divert money needed for the UK’s national cervical screening program, or lead women to mistakenly believe Pap smears aren’t necessary, doctors say.

“We have a cervical screening program, which is the envy of the world,” Thomas Ind, a gynecological surgeon in London, tells Bloomberg. “Whether it will continue to be as effective if you have a cervical cancer vaccine, I doubt it will be.”

[tags]Gardasil, HPV, Merck[/tags]