M&CC supporting Health Ministry’s HPV campaign

-to administer vaccines at 14 city schools

The Georgetown Mayor and City Council (M&CC) is on board with the Ministry of Public Health’s Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination campaign, according to the nurse in charge of the municipality Marlyn Gordon.

Gordon told reporters last Wednesday that the municipality’s three health centres would be supporting the campaign, which will see coverage of 14 schools in Georgetown for which they hold responsibility.

“In the Georgetown area, we’re responsible for 14 schools… and are going out on a daily basis to cover those schools,” Gordon related.

The nurse added that both boys and girls, aged 9 to 16, are being targeted to receive the vaccine during the campaign. “The HPV vaccine is mainly to protect the females from the cervical cancer. It’s the vaccine against cervical cancer. The Human Papillomavirus is being carried by the males and research has shown that females are being affected, so they decided to bring the vaccine on board and the boys have been included in this campaign,” Gordon said.

She added that the response so far has not been bad and while they do encounter some challenges, they continue to do their work daily.

However, though the campaign has been well received, some parents are not allowing their children to receive the vaccine.

“Persons are still not convinced that the vaccine is good…still, with all the advertisements and sensitisation, persons still have things in their mind about the vaccine,” Gordon said.  She added that teachers have an important role to play throughout the campaign period. “The schools that you find the teachers cooperating and they’re there, we’re getting a better response. The schools that you find they are pulled back, those are the schools we’re getting the problem with,” she noted.

Gordon told the meeting that at one of the schools, the teachers told students that the vaccine is not good and would cause them to become sterile and that they should not take it. She also spoke of an experience at another school, which she refused to name, where the teachers were not cooperative and did not provide the health workers with a space to work.

When asked about the skepticism that persons may have in allowing their children to receive the vaccine, Gordon added, “Well in the media over the weekend, we had an up surge where in Berbice they tried to blame illness on the vaccine, but from all instances, a vaccine within 72 hours is when you would get a reaction. The reaction for HPV is just a normal or mild fever somebody may have, redness at the vaccine site and pain at the vaccine site and those are the side effects,” she advised.

The HPV campaign, which commenced in February, is expected to come to an end sometime later this month.