New Zealand introduced the quadrivalent human papillomavirus (4vHPV) vaccine (Gardasil®) on 1 September 2008 followed by the school-based arm of the vaccination programme from February 2009 and an initial catch-up programme through to the end of 2010, targeting women before they turned 20 years of age. This paper reports data on genital wart diagnoses among all new clients attending the Auckland Sexual Health Service (ASHS) from 1 January 2007 to 31 December 2013. Over the study period, 43,480 new clients were seen at ASHS and genital warts were diagnosed in 5,711 (13.1%). Of the 19,894 female new clients seen, ethnicity was recorded as: NZ European 39.5%, Māori 15.1%, Pacific Peoples 13.0%, Other 32.5%. There was a general decrease across time in the diagnoses of genital warts among all ethnic groups presenting to ASHS. For females, there was evidence of a difference in the rate of change over time in the proportion of genital warts diagnoses in the vaccine-eligible cohort compared to the vaccine-ineligible cohort (p=0.004). Whereas the proportion of females diagnosed with genital warts each year was fairly stable in the vaccine-eligible cohort pre-vaccine (RR=0.98), the risk of diagnosis decreased markedly over the 5 years after the introduction of the vaccine (RR=0.77). In comparison, there was only a small decrease in proportion of genital warts diagnoses among non-eligible females (pre-vaccine RR=0.87 vs post-vaccine RR=0.95). There was no such significant difference in rate change pre- to post-vaccine between younger and older men, eligible or not (p=0.53). Notably, Māori and Pacific young women had the largest decreases in genital warts diagnoses post-vaccine introduction (93.4% each) followed by NZ European (80.2%).
