The Min­istry of Health has or­dered 20,000 vials of Hu­man Pa­pil­lo­ma Virus (HPV) vac­cines for pre-teen girls. The an­nounce­ment was made by act­ing chief med­ical of­fi­cer of the Min­istry of Health Dr Ak­e­nath Misir at the launch of the Tho­racic So­ci­ety on Wednes­day af­ter­noon. The launch was held at the Court­yard Mar­riott ho­tel, Port-of-Spain. At last week Thurs­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence, Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan an­nounced that the Gov­ern­ment would pro­vide 66,000 vials of the HPV vac­cines to pre-teen girls. He not­ed that the vac­cines could pro­tect them lat­er on in life from cer­vi­cal, anal and oral can­cers. "We have start­ed the pro­cure­ment process and have or­dered 20,000 vac­cines al­ready at a cost of US$14.60 each," Misir said on Wednes­day.

He ex­plained that each per­son would re­quire three dos­es, which would be ad­min­is­tered on a month­ly ba­sis. Pressed by the me­dia for more in­for­ma­tion, he de­clined, say­ing the min­is­ter would pro­vide fur­ther de­tails. Misir said Khan, who was ab­sent from Wednes­day's event, planned to host a news con­fer­ence soon where all oth­er ques­tions would be an­swered. Misir said part of the min­istry's plan was to host a work­shop for the me­dia to cre­ate more aware­ness of the HPV vac­cine. Pres­i­dent of the Tho­racic So­ci­ety, Ter­rence Seemu­n­gal, said the so­ci­ety was be­ing launched with the spe­cif­ic pur­pose of mov­ing tho­racic med­i­cine for­ward and ed­u­cat­ing the pub­lic on care and pre­ven­tion. He said this would be done by in­tro­duc­ing guide­lines and in­creas­ing aware­ness to the pub­lic. The lead­ing tho­racic ail­ment in T&T and the Caribbean is asth­ma, but the lead­ing one which re­quires surgery is lung can­cer, Seemu­n­gal said. There are 300 mil­lion peo­ple world­wide suf­fer­ing from asth­ma, he not­ed. Seemu­n­gal said the so­ci­ety was formed with 20 core mem­bers which would grow to in­clude physi­cians, nurs­es and all those who were treat­ing tho­racic pa­tients. He not­ed that an­oth­er goal is to im­prove the stan­dard of clin­i­cal care for pa­tients on spirom­e­try (tho­racic) med­i­cine.

Ac­cord­ing to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Utah School of Med­i­cine re­search unit Web site, spirom­e­try is the most com­mon of the pul­monary func­tion tests (PFTs), mea­sur­ing lung func­tion. It is used specif­i­cal­ly to mea­sure the amount (vol­ume) and/or speed (flow) of air that can be in­haled and ex­haled. Spirom­e­try, it said, is an im­por­tant tool used for as­sess­ing con­di­tions such as asth­ma, cys­tic fi­bro­sis, and chron­ic ob­struc­tive pul­monary dis­ease (COPD). The spirom­e­try test is per­formed us­ing a de­vice called a spirom­e­ter, which comes in sev­er­al dif­fer­ent va­ri­eties. The most com­mon­ly used guide­lines for spiro­met­ric test­ing and in­ter­pre­ta­tion are set by the Amer­i­can Tho­racic So­ci­ety and the Eu­ro­pean Res­pi­ra­to­ry So­ci­ety. Seemu­n­gal said the main symp­toms are short­ness of breath and cough. The so­ci­ety is al­so plan­ning to in­clude on its cal­en­dar a World Tu­ber­cu­lo­sis (TB) Day in Feb­ru­ary, Asth­ma Day in May, World Spirom­e­try day June 27, Lung Can­cer Month in No­vem­ber and World COPD Day on No­vem­ber 14.