Hyderabad: The Universal Health Organisation (UHO) has raised major concerns against the statewide Human Papillomavirus Vaccination (HPV) programme to adolescent girls, which the Telangana government is preparing to launch as part of efforts to prevent cervical cancer.
In a letter addressed to the Minister of Health and Family Welfare, UHO’s Damodar Rajanarasimha said that while they support the goal of reducing the burden of cervical cancer, they are “gravely concerned that the proposed rollout may proceed without adequate safeguards.”
Citing the earlier vaccination drives conducted in the undivided Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat between 2009 and 2010, the organisation said the girl recipients had reported severe effects. A fact-finding mission in Khammam in 2010 “documented that as many as 120 girls had experienced adverse reactions, including epileptic seizures, severe stomach aches, persistent headaches and mood swings following vaccination,” their letter read.
According to the organisation, the Parliamentary Standing Committee and independent investigators found grave violations, including improper consent procedures, language barrier in consent forms, absence of parental notification, inadequate adverse event monitoring, and conflicts of interest.
Demands put forth by UHO
The UHO, using the above reasons, urged the Minister to ensure the following condition to be met before the HPV vaccination programme is launched.
They demanded a prior informed consent, voluntariness and freedom from coercion, comprehensive adverse event monitoring and response, independent ethical oversight, transparency on funding and conflicts of interest, Ccmmunity awareness and social mobilisation.
The UHO listed reservations about whether the state government has undertaken the groundwork on this scale. It noted that Telangana has an acute absence of a state-specific epidemiological basis establishing the burden of cervical cancer among the population of girls who are proposed to be vaccinated.
There is a lack of “opacity surrounding funding, financial arrangements and stakeholder interest,” which they state is troubling, as at this stage of advanced planning, no public accounting has been made of the funding.
The organisation flagged unresolved questions about the adequacy of training for vaccination personnel, demanding that the government disclose the content, duration and reach of any training programme that has been or is proposed to be conducted.
There is an absence of published guidelines and post-vaccination monitoring protocols, which the organisation said is “alarming,” since there is no authoritative framework regarding the vaccination sessions.
The government has not demonstrated to the public that adequate vaccine preservation infrastructure is in place across all proposed vaccination sites in Telangana, the letter said, adding that HPV vaccines must be stored within a strictly maintained temperature range of 2 degrees Celsius to 8 degree Celsius.
UHO called on the governement to reveal whether the vaccine preparation to be deployed in Telangana contains thimerosal (ethyl mercury), a preservative that has been the subject of significant scientific and public health debate or any other harmful substances.
The organisation asked the government to have individualised record-keeping, saying that the current mass vaccination programme is being organised without accountability.
“We are acutely aware of the devastating toll that cervical cancer takes on women in India, disproportionately affecting those from marginalised communities. We seek only to ensure that the girls of Telangana are vaccinated with their full knowledge and that of their families, that they are treated with dignity and not as mere targets of a programme and that any child who suffers harm receives prompt, compassionate and effective medical care,” the organisation said.
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