Wes­ley Gib­bings

ST GEORGE'S–In­ter­na­tion­al­ly-renowned bio­med­ical re­searcher and HIV-1 pi­o­neer Dr Robert Gal­lo has de­scribed as "com­plete non­sense" on­go­ing claims about the harm­ful ef­fects of vac­cines.Gal­lo ex­pressed sur­prise that T&T had been a stag­ing-point last year for the de­bate over ad­min­is­ter­ing the Hu­man Pa­pil­lo­mavirus (HPV) vac­cine to school­girls.He told the T&T Guardian in an in­ter­view in Grena­da last Thurs­day: "If you don't get vac­ci­nat­ed, you're go­ing to have se­ri­ous, se­ri­ous prob­lems.

He added, "The risk of any vac­cine is al­most noth­ing."It is an enor­mous mis­take not to vac­ci­nate the pop­u­la­tion for the ob­vi­ous dis­eases."The spread of ru­mours (about the dan­gers of vac­cines) is based on ig­no­rance or based on over-sus­pi­cious­ness of things, or try­ing to at­tribute some ill­ness they saw in a child...they want to blame some­thing."There is no ev­i­dence that vac­cines are do­ing dam­age to chil­dren, Gal­lo said. "But there is an in­fi­nite amount of ev­i­dence, over­whelm­ing ev­i­dence, that it saves them."

The Catholic Ed­u­ca­tion Board of Man­age­ment and oth­er groups had ini­tial­ly re­sist­ed an at­tempt by the Min­istry of Health a year ago to in­tro­duce the HPV vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme among pu­bes­cent girls in the school sys­tem. As a re­sult, the Gov­ern­ment sus­pend­ed the pro­gramme, on­ly to rein­tro­duce it in Sep­tem­ber fol­low­ing a change of heart by ear­li­er op­po­nents.The pro­gramme al­so suf­fered from the un­avail­abil­i­ty of the vac­cine at health cen­tres through­out the coun­try, but the drug is now said to be avail­able on de­mand.

Gal­lo and oth­er ex­perts were in Grena­da for a vi­rol­o­gy work­shop for Caribbean jour­nal­ists be­ing fa­cil­i­tat­ed by the St George's Uni­ver­si­ty.Wide­ly recog­nised for his work in iden­ti­fy­ing the HIV virus, Gal­lo said at­ten­tion al­so needs to be paid to "emerg­ing virus­es since 1980."He point­ed to the Chikun­gun­ya virus–a de­bil­i­tat­ing mos­qui­to-borne dis­ease said to have orig­i­nat­ed in Africa–that has al­ready been seen in Do­mini­ca and St Maarten in the Caribbean.

Grena­da's health min­is­ter, Dr Clarisse Mod­este-Cowen, an­nounced at the work­shop that Grena­da had launched a mas­sive "clean-up cam­paign" to re­duce the in­ci­dence of mos­qui­to in­fes­ta­tions through­out the is­land.Chikun­gun­ya is spread by the Aedes ae­gyp­ti mos­qui­to, a ma­jor car­ri­er of dengue fever.