Cayman adds HPV to child vaccine list
(CNS): Following a pilot programme carried out in 2009 and 2010, government says that a cancer prevention vaccination will be integrated into Cayman’s childhood immunization programme starting in November of this year. Health Minister Mark Scotland announced Thursday a phased introduction of the Human Papillomavirus vaccine (HPV). The programme will be limited to girls only in the initial phase and it will be given as a course of three injections administered at set intervals over a 6-month period. The vaccine will be offered on a first come, first serve basis, while supplies last, government officials revealed.
The move was welcomed by Dr Sook Yin, Medical Director of the Cayman Islands Cancer Society, which has campaigned for a long time to get the vaccine onto the immunization schedule. The doctor said she was elated that the school-based element of the vaccine programme was moving forward, making the programme convenient for both students and parents. Parents or guardians must attend the appointment with their children at the clinics and give written consent for the vaccine to be administered.
A public awareness campaign about cervical cancer and the HPV vaccine will be undertaken by the Cayman Islands Cancer Society and the Public Health Department using a variety of outlets including media interviews, advertisements, public education presentations in schools, including Home School Associations and specially organized district awareness sessions.
Leaflets will also be available at these sessions as well as the Cayman Islands Cancer Society on Maple Road, all Health Services Authority facilities, doctor’s offices and libraries.
“It will be a phased programme initially held at the Public Health Clinic at the Cayman Islands Hospital, West Bay and Bodden Town health centres, Faith Hospital in Cayman Brac and all government high schools throughout the Cayman Islands,“ the minister of health said, as he commended the ongoing collaboration between the health authority and the Cayman Islands Cancer Society. “Our immunization programme continues to be very successful. I encourage young women and their parents or guardians to take advantage of this cervical cancer prevention vaccination,” Scotland added.
HPV causes cancer of the cervix, genital warts and some precancerous lesions of the cervix, vagina and vulva. The vaccine is of greatest benefit if it is administered before the onset of sexual activity; hence the target age group is 11 to 12 year old students. At this age, the antibody responseto vaccine is optimal. However, the vaccine will also be available to young women between the ages of 11 and 17 years at the various Health Services Authority facilities.
The education minister Rolston Anglin welcomed the programme but said the vaccine is not mandatory.
“The vaccination is being offered at school for your convenience. No child will be vaccinated without parental consent and you will have the opportunity to be present at the time of vaccination if you choose,” the minister added.
See fact sheet on HPV below.
Category: Health
I would also recommend this site.
http://www.nvic.org/
It is always good to make an informed decision, we all have the right to that. We should all as parents read the vaccine inserts that come with the boxes of vaccines which are there for the doctors to read. As a parent first reading some of these vaccines inserts and realizing that most of the vaccines are produced using chicken eggs as the host to grow the disease strains in and after extraction can contain traces of egg in them. My child was allergic to eggs however he did not receive these vaccinations due to that fact. Also learning that various contaminants are found in the vaccines and often time cause immune reactions in the vaccine recipients was a shock. By learning about the vaccine benefits and also the possible dangers I was able to come to a decision in regards to vaccinating my child. As long as we have the right to be informed and make informed decisions then we should always utilize this because we are all free thinking individuals, whatever the outcome of that decision may be.
Parents who refuse vaccines are are selfish as they are stupid. You can find a mountain of crap on the internet, but refusing vaccines is putting children's lives at risk. The UK is experience a whooping cough epidemic the winter because of idiots who did not get their children immunised.
Well if your child is "Protected" by the vaccin, than my child should have no effect on yours. Your argument is ignorant. Your welcome to harm your child if you want but don't tell me what I must do to mine. BACK OFF!
Actually, if your child contracts whooping cough, any baby under the age of six months is vulnerable to infection. The first routine vaccination at two months does not offer protection until after the age of six months. They have now begun vaccinating pregnant women in the UK in the hopes of offering protection to newborns, as they are struggling with the largest pertussis outbreak since routine vaccinations began. So yes, your unvaccinated child could, in fact, be a danger to the children of others.
PS I am not the poster to whom you were replying…just felt the need to clarify.
That isn't how vaccines work. The idea of a vaccine is that if everybody gets one there are enough safegaurds in place to protect those for whom the vaccine didn't work.
Not vaccinating a child with a vaccine known to be safe is child endangerment…and spreading lies on the internet about the safety of vaccines is lible. Caymankind to bare false witness, I suppose?
Whooping cough is making it's way through North America as well. I only hope polio and smallpox have finally been eliminated – yes, through vaccines!
The disease-prevention benefits of vaccines is much greater than the possible side-effects. I hope these stupid parents keep their kids in permanent quarantine, as they are a threat to the rest of society. Young infants, the elderly, or people who might have weakened immune systems, such as cancer patients, are vulnerable to communicable disease.
Some diseases show no symptoms, such as meningitis, where a person won't have symptoms right away but are highly infectious. The measles virus can remain in the air in a room that a carrier has just left.
If parents don't "believe" in immunization, I suggest they google images of birth defects associated with rubella in the pregnant mother, or cancer of the cervix. How about the short but agonizing death through tetanus?
These parents should also educate themselves on the latest in vaccines instead of this sensational psuedo-science crap. The Flu vaccine, for instance, no longer has any egg in the formula.
Yes, there's lots of stuff about this stuff on the inter-webs. At places like Science Based Medicine. (Which has a detiled rebutal of the below recomended video.) Or you could check reputable sources, i.e, not web pages set up to sell someone's book,like the USA's CDC HPV webpages or the UK's NHS HPV webpages (the later's side-effects page is sobering reading). (Unfortunately I can't deep-link to them because CNS' webfilters think it looks like spam. But I'm sure anyone reading this understands how to use the inteernet. 🙂
I'm equally sure, however, that the problem with most of these will be that they are 'establishment' websites. What would it take to convince you that something is safe?
A more useful contribution, rather than pseudoscience objections, would be to ask the Ministry for Health how you go about reporting a side-effect (statistically, they might happen) and what the Ministry (HSA) would do about it?
HPV vaccine may be one of the most dangerous andunnecessary vaccines on the market. The reported death toll for the HPV vaccine now stands at 89 (2010)…As of November 3, 2010, there were also 20,575 adverse reactions……"In 90 percent of cases, your body's immune system clears the HPV infection naturally within two years."…This is true whether the infection is the type that can cause warts or cancer…
It must be borne in mind that drug manufacturers sole motivation is profit, not saving lives. Furthermore, these companies make so much money that being sued by those harmed of killed by their products is merely a budget line item under ‘cost of sales’.
Every parent should educate itself before making a decision about this horrible vaccine.
http://search.mercola.com/search/Pages/results.aspx?k=hpv%20vaccine (
49 Sudden Deaths, 213 Permanent Disabilities) and so on
I hope indeed that people research this issue, including the fact that Dr Mercola is an alternative medicine chap and he has been nabbed by the FDA for certain …er…untoward practices. Google him, folks.
To: Anonymous Fri. 09/28/2012-19:51
If the pharmaceutical companies were honest about their research Dr. Mercola would not be exposing these atrocities that are being committed by companies like Monsanto & Merk and others on innocent people. You used the word nabbed in reference to Dr. Mercola as if to sayhe was convicted and jailed for some crime. It never happened! These people have been trying to stop him for years, but even with all their $billions they can't stop him because he speaks the truth.
He has embarrassed the FDA the CDC and others by exposing their questionable approval of many products that later were found to cause many dangerous side effects and deaths. LIKE THE PRODUCT VIOX. These products have been banned in most of the world. Great Britain, The European Union, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and India. Do your research! What you seem to fail to understand is, that what Dr. Mercola is doing is to bring to the awareness of the public that even tho this vaccine may help prevent HPV the side effects are much worse than the disease [cervical cancer] which has a very high rate of being cured thru conventional medical practices. There are 100 types of HPV but this vaccine is effective against only 4 of them. I would hate to think that any parent would take a chance [unnecessarily] with a vaccine that has the potential to cause permanent physical damage, or even kill their child. Think of the children they have no choice in the matter. It's you the parent who makes the decision.
DR. MERCOLA IS ONLY THE MESSENGER! PLEASE STOP TRYING TO SHOOT HIM!
Watch the movie "The Greater Good"! Inform yourselvs before you sentence your beautiful Daughters, Girlfriends, Wives and Mothers to death! Wake Up People!!!!
Yes, folks, by all means watch this movie which has been described as 'creationist anti-vaccine propaganda". Just google the "movie" and then spend a lot of time reading the other side of the argument posed in this post about sentencing your loved ones to death. As the poster says, "wake up people" (but only after reading ALL the evidence)