In light of the Catholic Board of Ed­u­ca­tion's de­ci­sion to al­low the Hu­man Pa­pil­lo­ma Virus (HPV) vac­cine Gar­dasil to be ad­min­is­tered in its schools un­der spe­cif­ic con­di­tions, the Health Min­istry is set to re­sume its vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme from Ash Wednes­day.There will al­so be an ag­gres­sive pub­lic aware­ness cam­paign to in­form the wider pub­lic of the vac­cine and the pos­si­ble side ef­fects.

Health Min­is­ter Fuad Khan, in a brief tele­phone in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, said he ex­pects the vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme to re­sume next week and con­tin­ue from there.Khan said the vac­ci­na­tion was on­ly sus­pend­ed in Catholic schools to avoid fur­ther com­pli­ca­tions. He added an aware­ness pro­gramme was done at New­town Girls' RC, Mar­aval Rd, Port-of-Spain, last week and he ex­pects it to con­tin­ue now that the board has giv­en its okay.

The min­istry's man­ag­er of the ex­pand­ed pro­gramme on im­mu­ni­sa­tion, Gwen­dolyn Snag­gs, said all Form One stu­dents of pub­lic and pri­vate schools are ex­pect­ed to be vac­ci­nat­ed against the dis­ease.Snag­gs al­so said in a brief tele­phone in­ter­view that "an ag­gres­sive" aware­ness pro­gramme will be car­ried out. She said no spe­cif­ic school has been tar­get­ed to kick off the re­sump­tion of the vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme.

She stressed the vac­cine is op­tion­al and will on­ly be ad­min­is­tered with parental con­sent.The Catholic Board on Thurs­day is­sued a re­lease say­ing it had agreed to have Gar­dasil ad­min­is­tered in its schools un­der spe­cif­ic con­di­tions, such as that the min­istry must pro­vide full dis­clo­sure about the vac­cine to par­ents.

The Catholic Board of Ed­u­ca­tion had pre­vi­ous­ly ob­ject­ed to the vac­cine be­ing ad­min­is­tered in its schools, which re­sult­ed in the min­istry sus­pend­ing the pro­gramme in schools and in­stead ad­min­is­ter­ing it through its health fa­cil­i­ties with parental con­sent.