11,986 Pupils In Northern Region Immunised Against Cervical Cancer

An estimated 11,986 female-pupils of classes four and five, in 547 basic schools across six Districts in Ghana’s Northern Region, are being immunised against the human papilomavirus (HPV), a virus that causes cervical cancer.

 

An advanced and uncontrolled growth or division of abnormal cells of the cervix of the uterus of a young woman is called cervical cancer. Globally, cervical cancer is the second most common cause of cancer deaths amongst women. 

 

About 510,000 cases of cervical cancer are diagnosed or reported annually with 68,000 in Africa, 77,000 in Latin America and 245,000 in Asia, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). The global body says in 2005, almost 260,000 to 290,000 women died of the disease, nearly 95 percent of them in developing countries including Ghana thus making cervical cancer one of the gravest threats to women’s lives. 

 

According to health experts, at least 80 percent of all incidents of cervical cancer and related mortalities had been observed in regions of Africa with women from underserved and resource-poor populations carrying the greatest burden of the disease. 

 

In Ghana for instance, between 18 and 22 percent of cancers in women are caused by cervical cancer. The disease as peculiar as it is, takes between 10 and 30 years to incubate and spread in the affected person. It is however difficult and costly to treat if it multiplies in the system of a person. 

 

But, thanks to the Rural Women Initiative for Development and Empowerment (RUWIDE), a non-governmental organisation headquartered in Salaga in the East Gonja District, through whose effort a national pilot immunisation programme was undertaken in two regions of Ghana including the Northern and Central.

 

The Northern Regional Director of the Ghana Health Service (GHS) Dr. Akwasi Twumasi, told journalists that RUWIDE through its partners abroad had made available the expensive drugs for the immunisation exercise in six selected districts in the region including East Gonja, Kumbungu, Tolon, Mion, Savelugu-Nanton and Yendi as well as some other districts in the Central Region.

 

He explained that there were two types of HPV vaccines, namely; gardasil and cervarix, adding that in the vaccination exercise, it was the gardasil vaccine that was being used and each child would be required to take three doses in order to be fully protected.

 

Dr. Twumasi also stated that the class four and five pupils were targeted for the exercise because it was very important for them before their first sexual contact, since they would not have been exposed to the HPV infection. Once a girl or woman has been infected with the virus, the vaccine might not work at all, he noted.

 

He further expatiated that it was important to go for cervical cancer screening even after the vaccination from age 30, stressing that the gardasil vaccine does not prevent other kinds of sexually transmitted infections including HIV or against pregnancy.  

 

Cervical cancer is caused by smoking, unprotected sex with multiple sex partners, early sex before adulthood, infection with the HPV and among others. 

 

Meanwhile, Dr. Twumasi recommended that, all women especially teenagers who are at risk of cervical cancer should regularly go for screening or testing, and urged young girls to abstain from early sex, avoid multiple sex partners and vaccinate against HPV.