Melis­sa Doughty

The Min­istry of Health plans to in­oc­u­late 20,000 pre-pu­bes­cent girls, ages 11 and 12, in No­vem­ber against the virus which is the ma­jor cause of cer­vi­cal can­cer. The Hu­man Pa­pil­lo­mavirus (HPV) cam­paign was launched yes­ter­day at the min­istry, Ed­ward Street, Port-of-Spain. Al­though Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan could not give an ex­act fig­ure, he es­ti­mat­ed it was cost­ing the Gov­ern­ment ap­prox­i­mate­ly $4-$5 mil­lion to pro­vide the vac­cine.

The three-part vac­cine, which will be giv­en free of charge, costs $185 a shot. In his fea­ture ad­dress to the me­dia and health of­fi­cials Khan said his min­istry's planned to in­oc­u­late first-year fe­male stu­dents at sec­ondary schools with the con­sent of a par­ent or guardian. The min­istry is work­ing with the Pan-Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (PA­HO) and World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion's (WHO) re­gion­al of­fice in T&T to pro­vide the vac­cine.

Young men will not be giv­en the vac­cine since cas­es of pe­nile can­cer, al­so caused by HPV, are not as preva­lent. Oth­er of­fi­cials present at the launch were Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer (CMO) Ak­e­nath Misir, Dr Yi­tades Ge­bre, PA­HO/WHO's Fam­i­ly Health and Dis­ease Man­age­ment ad­vis­er and Dr Ku­mar Sun­dara­nee­di, di­rec­tor of Health Pro­grammes and Tech­ni­cal Sup­port Ser­vices.

Khan said: "Pre­ven­tion is al­ways bet­ter than cure. The Min­istry of Health has em­barked up­on a pre­ven­ta­tive mode of most un­healthy lifestyles, in this case can­cer. We are sit­ting in what we can call to­day a pub­lic health land­mark of Trinidad and To­ba­go." He said HPV, which is sex­u­al­ly trans­mit­ted, is re­spon­si­ble for 66 to 70 per cent of cer­vi­cal can­cers and strains 16 and 18 of the virus were re­spon­si­ble for 90 per cent of cer­vi­cal can­cers.

Khan said many women even­tu­al­ly end­ed up with stage three cer­vi­cal can­cer and ul­ti­mate­ly have to have rad­i­cal hys­terec­tomies, ra­di­a­tion, chemother­a­py and may even­tu­al­ly suf­fer from kid­ney dis­ease. Ap­prox­i­mate­ly, 123 women are di­ag­nosed with cer­vi­cal can­cer an­nu­al­ly and 93 of those die from the dis­ease, he added. If the 11-12 age group was missed, he said, that de­creased a young woman's chance of be­ing able to fight the dis­ease.

The ben­e­fits, he said, out­weighed the moral, eth­i­cal and eco­nom­ic ar­gu­ments usu­al­ly pre­sent­ed against use of the vac­cine. The min­istry, which would be buy­ing the vac­cine in bulk, would get it at a "rea­son­able rate," Khan said.