Govt urged to include cervical cancer vaccine in national program

Caption: Dr Sapuri displaying the Gardasil vaccine.

By MATTHEW VARI

Sunday, October 4, 2015 (Sunday Chronicle, PNG)

SENIOR Gynecologist Dr Matias Sapuri has urged the government to seriously consider the Gardasil Vaccine into the National Vaccination Program.

Sapuri made the point during a conference regarding last week’s Globathon Walk to advocate on ‘below the belt’ women cancers.

He said that the Gardasil Vaccine, a vaccine for use in prevention of certain strains of Human Papillomavirus (HPV) type strains that cause 70 percent of cervical cancers, has been available in the country since 2009.

“Gardasil is now available in Papua New Guinea, and PIH (Pacific International Hospital) is probably the only hospital that is now giving Gardasil vaccine to women,” Sapuri said.

“We are talking about young girls at the age of 9 to the age of 26 in young women- that is the population that we are targeting to date.”

“We introduced the vaccine in 2009 and will continue to do that over the years. This vaccine is very effective and studies have shown globally the effectiveness is about 99%, but as you know globally this vaccine is given in three doses, two months after first dose, and six months after the second, but recently a recent paper done shows that women can now be protected with a single vaccine dose.”

“It is reassuring to us especially developing countries that it could be expensive to have three doses, but now we can say having one dose is reasonably cheap and give almost near the protective rate as three dose vaccine. It is very encouraging to women globally.”

He said that from and national perspective it is important that the government of PNG should consider the vaccine into the national vaccination program.

“If we do have it in our national vaccination program, a single dose may be a good start as many other countries have done it successfully as well.”

“What you do is a mass vaccination program where a period of five years where you identify young girls at the age of 9 and under the age of 26. Once you have got the base sorted out and the annual vaccine of the young girls coming into the population will cost less.”

“Once we nationalize it through an annual program we could end up spending anything from K1.2 to K1.5 million annually,” Dr Sapuri pointed out.

“Some might ask if they are more than 26 can get it and the answer is yes you can get it.”