Bangladesh will get vaccines to tackle cervical cancer as soon as it applies, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI) has said.
This comes within weeks of its announcing record low price for the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines for poor countries.
Its Chief Executive Officer Dr Seth Berkeley told bdnews24.com on Wednesday that they were expecting Bangladesh to apply for the vaccine in 2015, as indicated during discussions before.
“Bangladesh will apply to GAVI when they feel they are ready for rolling it out,” Berkeley said on the sidelines of the Women Deliver conference in the Malaysian capital. “Right now it looks like 2015, but that might change depending on what Bangladesh wants to do’.
“But Bangladesh can apply anytime,” Berkeley reassured.
GAVI says Bangladesh stands 11th in the world in cervical cancer fatalities with 17.9 women dying in 100,000 due to the largely sexually transmitted killer disease every year.
Experts say immunising girls with three doses of the vaccine before initiated in sex and before exposure to the infection holds the key to prevent it.
A public-private partnership, GAVI alliance works together with the developing and donor countries, the WHO, UNICEF, the World Bank, the vaccine producers, technical agencies, and civil society.
Bangladesh’s health minister AFM Ruhal Haque is a board member of the alliance.
The vaccine is available for routine immunisation in relatively wealthy countries until now.
But according to GAVI, more than 85 percent of the 275,000 global deaths every year due to cervical cancer are in low-income nations.
They have already outlined plans to introduce the vaccine in Ghana, Lao DPR, Madagascar, Malawi, Niger and Sierra Leone this year and in Tanzania in early next year.
Kenya became the first country to deliver the HPV vaccines with GAVI support less than a week ago after the price dropped.
Earlier this month GAVI announced a record low price for the HPV vaccine for the low-income countries –$4.5 per dose against more than $100 in developed countries.
The previous lowest public sector price was $13 per dose.
GAVI that provides almost half of the country’s annual need of $45 million for vaccination last year awarded Bangladesh for the second time for its best routine vaccination coverage among the 74 partner countries.
The minister in December while celebrating the GAVI award said he had plans to introduce the vaccine against cervical cancer in Bangladesh.
American Cancer Society’s National Vice President Maria Blair told bdnews24.com that Bangladesh has “an opportunity not only to introduce vaccination but also comprehensive screening and treatment”.
She said cervical cancer is one of the leading causes of deaths which are ‘largely preventable’.
“We know that the HPV vaccine is extremely effective,” she said.
She said introducing the vaccine would be cost-effective as the virus “often hits women in their prime producing years and can lead to families without female heads of households, taken out of the workforce”.
She said available statistics suggest the vaccine cures 70 to 80 percent of the afflictions .
Vaccinating a generation of women would be ‘a tremendous investment’ as there would ‘many fewer cases and the costs of screening and treatment would come down’, she said.
She said even Rwanda had already rolled out HPV vaccination through their schools.
She termed the cervical cancer a silent killer as she said the symptoms appear when ‘it is too late’.
Bleeding, pain, and swelling are some of the symptoms that show up in later stage of the disease, she said.
Source: Bd news24
