Home » Medical & Health Sorry, No Cervical Cancer Vaccine For Nigerian Women –Donors Category :- Medical & Health Author :- Folly Posted on June 19, 2013, 7:47 am Click to Enlarge! There seems to be more trouble ahead as Nigeria has been disqualified from benefitting from subsidised vaccine for cervical cancer. It is a fallacy to say that cervical cancer is not preventable. Neither is it true to say that Nigeria is so poor that it cannot provide its women population with the right vaccine to prevent the disease caused by the Human Papilloma Virus. Yet, the disease still kills about 26 Nigerian women daily. This is due to high cost of HPV vaccine and poor commitment from all the three tiers of governments to fight the scourge. A dose of the vaccine costs N20,800. And donor agencies that should have been of help by giving subsidised vaccine to the country have said that they would not do so because Nigeria lacks effective vaccination coverage system, infrastructure and policy for the proper delivery of the much needed product. The nation, they argue, also lacks proper cold chain system for the preservation of the vaccines. What makes the situation pathetic is that, the country has been rated the first nation in Africa and the fifth in the world with the highest cervical cancer deaths. This is according to a new report released in May by the Cervical Cancer Free Coalition, titled “Crisis Card.” It states that cervical cancer has reached a crisis level in Nigeria with 9,659 women dying of the disease every year in the country. India and China, with 72,825 and 33,914 deaths respectively, topped the list of countries where most women are dying of this disease in the world. The others are Brazil, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Pakistan. Cervical cancer occurs when the DNA of the HPV virus has infected the cervix of a woman over a long period of time. As deadly as this cancer is, it is 99 per cent preventable with a vaccine and also 97 per cent treatable when detected early through screening. For now,it is the only cancer that can be prevented with a vaccine. One thus would wonders why women are still dying of this cancer if it has a vaccine and it can be cured, compared to other killer cancers of the breast, liver and kidneys. Experts, stakeholders, survivors of the disease, who spoke at the Global Cervical Cancer Prevention Forum in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia recently identified cost of the HPV vaccine and poor commitment from governments where this disease is rampant as reasons why more women are dying from the preventable disease. The HPV vaccine that is given to girls and women to prevent this cancer is expensive.It is also a venture which many governments are not willing to commit resources to, even though it is killing their womenfolk daily. For example, it costs N20,800 to get each dose of the HPV vaccine in Nigeria and a woman would need three doses over a period of six months. This is far above the N18,000 minimum wage in the country. However, to make the vaccine more affordable and accessible, the global community, through donor agencies such as GAVI Alliance, will be providing this vaccine for governments at a highly subsidised rate. But the Chief Executive Officer, Gavi Alliance, Dr. Seth Berkley, whose organisation coordinates the availability, supply and distribution of the HPV vaccines, said Nigeria would not benefit from the globally subsided HPV vaccines. Berkley told our correspondent that though Nigeria recorded the highest number of deaths from the disease in Africa, it was not eligible to benefit from this largesse due to poor vaccination system and poor coverage.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Jun 2013 17:54:43 +0000
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