New York City's Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito announced she has tested positive for the human papillomavirus and needs a biopsy in a tweet delivered Sunday night.

She said the decision to go public wasn't easy, but she decided to use her high-profile status to educate the public about the disease. "Yes, I'm an extremely public person," she tweeted. "But this position has led me to understand I now have a bigger responsibility."

Mark-Viverito admitted she waited two years before going to a gynecologist. "Our health should never be compromised," she tweeted. "Annual physicals have to be sacred. Yet our health care system doesn't lend itself to this for many."

HPV is a common sexually transmitted infection, and most sexually active people will contract one type of the virus at some point in their lives. Some forms of the virus can lead to cancer.

Her announcement coincides with the city's health department launching an ad campaign a week ago urging parents to get their kids vaccinated against HPV. Only 40 percent of girls and 22 percent of boys in their teens have completed all three doses of the vaccine, according to the New York Daily News. The ad campaign will appear in New York City's subway cars and will run for two months in both English and Spanish.

However, the vaccine, Gardasil, is expensive, at $120 a dose and $360 for the three required doses, plus the cost of doctors' visits. There have been repeated legislative attempts to make the vaccine mandatory as a school vaccine requirement but these have been resisted mainly because the legislature would have to provide funding and there is objection to the drug's safety and moral objections related to a vaccine mandated for sexually transmitted disease. Two states have mandated the vaccine: Texas (for all girls entering sixth grade, with some exceptions) and Virginia.

About 14 million people become newly infected with human papillomavirus each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, making it the most common sexually transmitted infection in America. Most sexually active people, regardless of gender, will get at least one type of HPV at some point in their lives. Health practitioners recommend regular visits to the gynecologist for pap smears.

In an interview with Latin Post last month, Elena Roman, Chief Operating Officer for Cancer Treatment Centers of America, said: "We have to accelerate education within our communities because cancer is the number one cause of death with Latinos, and it shouldn't be that way. What we were seeing is people turning up late for treatment, not turning up at all or not staying for treatment."

Roman said there are several reasons for Latinos not seeking help early -- fear, lack of information, lack of access to affordable healthcare, poor diet and not taking care of themselves.