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Vaccination campaign against cervical cancer continues despite protest

Jan 24, 2012 News

 

Health Minister, Dr. Bheri Ramsaran, has said the Ministry’s Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccine campaign aimed at slashing incidences of cervical cancer is ongoing despite calls for its immediate termination.
The programme, which targets mainly females between the ages of 11 and 13 years, has been met with resistance by several women, who have requested the Ministry to terminate the campaign until the population is furnished with adequate information on the side effects of the Gardasil vaccine.
However, during an interview with this publication yesterday, Dr Ramsaran insisted that the Ministry will increase and intensify its campaign based on the premise that other successful vaccination exercises targeting males and females were conducted countrywide.
Noting his suspicion of the group calling for the campaign’s termination, Dr. Ramsaran stated, “I am certain there is a little political grouping masquerading as an NGO, which is looking for traction.”
He said that trained medical healthcare providers and Senior Health Visitors have been visiting schools and interacting with the public. The Ministry had done extensive work prior to the campaign’s launching, and assured that focus will be placed on its execution and even after the campaign would have completed.
Dr. Ramsaran said that the vaccines have been dispatched to various Regions and several children were administered. When completed over 6,000 girls will be recipients. He asserted the girls who received the vaccines at the launching of the programme are healthy. There were no reports of ‘so-called’ minor side effects like pains, which happen with any vaccination.
Since the launching of the campaign on January 11, several women and members of Red Thread, a Non-Governmental Organization, voiced their concerns about little public knowledge about the vaccine’s side effects.
The vaccination programme aims to arrest the potential impact of women contracting cervical cancer and also to prevent other health issues such as genital warts and even cancers of the anus, vagina and vulva.
At one of the picketing exercises in front the Health Ministry, Charlene Wilkinson, an educator, was among the group. In an invited comment, she said that her concerns are not limited to the actual introduction of the vaccine Gardasil as a means of prevention of the Human Papilloma-virus (HPV) but rather the manner in which the Ministry is handling it.
HPV is said to be a major risk factor for cervical cancer but according to Wilkinson, there is not enough information in the public domain that highlights both the “pros and cons” of the vaccine.   She alluded to the notion that “evidence shows that the dangers of the vaccine are much stronger than the pros.”

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