Dorothy Kweyu’s articulate opinion piece on the HPV vaccine (October 30) failed to take into account some key issues about cervical cancer and the national HPV vaccination roll-out for 10-year-old girls.
Cervical cancer and its treatment violates women in a very painful and undignified manner.
The symptoms and treatment of the disease revolve around the most intimate and private parts of her womanhood.
Years of working with cervical cancer patients facing social isolation, intractable pain and emotional meltdown, and knowing that this is a cancer whose cause is known, have left me with the same conviction as the World Health Organisation — that cervical cancer is a cancer we can, and should, eliminate from the face of the earth.
Whereas the greatest burden of cervical cancer deaths and suffering is in Africa, however, the continent is late in joining the league of countries seeking to prevent and, eventually, eliminate cervical cancer through vaccination.
Save for Burundi, Kenya is the last East African country to introduce the vaccine.
More than 110 countries, 60 per cent of them in Western Europe and North America, as well as Australia have established national HPV vaccination programmes.
The notion that it is a conspiracy against Africans is, therefore, a distortion of facts perpetrated by the social media.
Numerous studies in countries that have had HPV vaccinations for several years show no increase in sexual promiscuity in vaccinated populations.
Women develop cervical cancer through no fault of their own and not because of past promiscuity.
Therefore, putting sex and sexual violations in the heart of the cervical cancer discourse piles guilt and shame on cervical cancer patients and fuels stigma.
Majority of men and women, even in faithful monogamous relationships, will get HPV at some point in their lives. Fortunately, most clear the HPV through their own immunity.
But we cannot tell who will go on to develop cervical cancer, hence the HPV vaccination drive.
People with HIV are at slightly higher risk of cervical cancer due to lowered immunity and are also candidates for HPV vaccination.
Vaccines are used to either prevent or treat cancer. The hepatitis B vaccine, which protects against hepatitis B infection, a risk factor of liver cancer, is routinely given to babies and health workers.
Scientists are working to refine vaccines for cancer treatment where the vaccine is introduced to enable the body’s own immune system to fight cancer.
Kenya moved with the global scientific community so that we benefit from evidence-based cutting edge research in cancer.
Our country does not have enough resources to vaccinate both boys and girls as is the practice in developed countries.
The HPV vaccine protects girls against cervical cancer later in life. Our young people must be taught the values of chastity, sexual purity and abstinence in addition to being vaccinated.
Morals and public health interventions like vaccinations are not necessarily contradictory.
David Makumi, patron, the Oncology Nurses Chapter-Kenya.
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