By Sainabou Sambou
Top official at the Ministry of Health has said the turnout for cervical cancer vaccination across the country is still far lower than the past years, but renewed the ministry’s calls on parents to get their girl children immunised against the disease.
Cervical cancer is a disease cause by Human Paploma Virus mostly in girls and women that can lead to death if not detected earlier.
Aja Kandeh Jawo, Assistance Communication Officer for Expanded Program on Immunization at the Ministry of Health said: “the turnout for cervical cancer vaccine is not as usually, the HPV vaccination of cervical cancer has been going on for three to five years.”
“It’s very minimal on a daily bases, they are not more than six hundred per region western one has the highest number of population and we have not done any analysis for now. But weekly the urban area have more result than the rural area,” she added.
She continued that the HPV vaccine “is only given to female because the disease affects only females although the boys or men can have the virus but they didn’t have the Slavic where the virus can live and make some destruction.”
According to her, this is why it’s only given to the female because they have the uterus where the baby lie along that line is the Slavic. He therefore advised parents to allow their girl child to take the vaccination because it’s a disease that’s kills a lot of people especially the women.
“The disease has killed a lot of peoples but most of them are on notice it’s like undiagnosed before most of them know it’s cervical cancer is already late and they can’t do anything for those people but the only thing that can be done is to give them paracetamol until their death time,” she said.
She continued: “the young children are vaccinated because they are not exposed to sexual intercourse or activities and the vaccine is very effective in every hundred ninety-five percent is completely prevented from the disease.”
