50,000 girls to be vaccinated with Human Papilloma Virus in 2013
TIME PUBLISHED - Friday, December 21, 2012, 6:41 am
A total of 50,000 young girls are expected to be vaccinated with the human papilloma virus (HPV) during the cervical cancer national pilot project.
Head of Cervical Cancer Training and Prevention Programme (CCTPP) in Zambia, Sharon Kapambwe, disclosed the development in a telephone interview with ZANIS in Lusaka yesterday
Dr. Kapambwe said the demonstration project, which will begin with Lusaka province in March next year, was aimed at reducing newcervical cancer infections in the country.
She said the project, which will target mainly school girls, will later be rolled out to all the other provinces of the country.
Dr. Kapambwe further explained that one of the major objectives of the pilot programme was to prevent new cervical cancer infections especially in young girls who are not yet sexually active.
The human papilloma virus vaccines are given to protect women against cervical cancer infections.
Government, through the Ministry of Health and in partnership with other stakeholders, has intensified the fight against breast and cervical cancer which are the most common cancers found in Zambian women and causes more deaths than any other cancer.
ZANIS
Labels: CANCER, HPV, VACCINES
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COMMENT - Don't let your children get vaccinated. This is from the same crowd who believe there are 'too many people on the planet'. And vaccinating infants, when there is no trackrecord of the damage these vaccines do over the years, is a crime.
New vaccine for babies
Saturday, 14 April 2012 18:53
Shamiso Yikoniko
Zimbabwe has placed the infant killer tag on four more diseases in a development that will see children under five years old also being vaccinated against petussis, hemophilia, meningitis and pneumonia. Previously, children were vaccinated against six diseases — tuberculosis, poliomyelitis, measles, diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough.
However, the imminent introduction of the pneumococcal vaccine will see the number rise to 10 and the vaccination schedule change. The director of epidemiology and disease control in the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare, Dr Portia Manangazira, said the introduction of the vaccine is expected to go a long way in reducing the country’s child mortality rate.
“The country has been strained with a huge number of children under the age of five succumbing to meningitis and pneumonia,” she said.
“The introduction of the pneumococcal vaccine will be a pillar of child survival and the improvement of child health.” Under the new dispensation, the five-year booster will be scrapped while the vaccination schedule will also change.
BCG will continue to be given at birth with other vaccines being administered at six weeks, 10 weeks, 14 weeks, nine months and 18 months.
However, the growth monitoring process will continue until the child turns five.
According to the Demographic Health Survey for 2010/2011, the mortality rate for children under five is 84 deaths per 1 000 live births while the infant mortality rate, which covers children below two years old, stands at 57 deaths per 1 000 live births.
The neo-natal mortality rate is 31 deaths per 1 000 live births.
The introduction of the pneumococcal vaccine comes amid revelations that pneumonia is one of the leading causes of death in children.
“Some countries in the region have already adopted the new vaccines and it has helped reduce their infant mortality rates,” said Dr Manangazira.
“Our schedule had become outdated and saw us losing many infants, which is something that will be a thing of the past with the introduction of the new vaccine.”
Labels: VACCINES
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COMMENT - Bill Gates wasn't a 'good guy' when he was destroying computer and software companies, and he is not a good guy today.
African leaders must prioritise life-saving vaccines: Bill Gates
Tuesday, 24 May 2011 22:07
MICROSOFT founder Bill Gates has called on African countries to work harder to get life-saving vaccines to children, as their sluggishness could derail efforts to save millions of lives and stamp out deadly diseases.
The magnate, who these days spends more time talking about the "miracle of vaccines" than software, told AFP this week that poor governance often caused children to miss out on life-saving drugs.
He spoke in a telephone interview ahead of a speech to the World Health Assembly in Geneva yesterday in which he said he will remind the world that technology is only as effective as the leaders delivering it.
Gates said that once you have vaccines invented and manufactured at low cost, and rich donors paying for them, "you have to have developing countries act to take the vaccines and get them out to all the kids."
"It is tragic when the last delivery piece holds it back," he said.
"You have some countries, northern Nigeria, or Chad or the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) where less than half the kids right now are getting the vaccines," he said, referring to polio immunisation in those countries.
"They are just not putting good people on it, not tracking their results, not even getting out to parts of the country. The message has to be clear. They have to see this as their top priority. It hasn't been."
The world is 99 percent towards making polio the second disease to be wiped out, after smallpox.
The paralysing disease, which once terrorised the developed world, exists now only in a few countries.
Nigeria, the world's most troublesome polio spot, saw a 95 percent cut in cases last year due to revitalised immunisation but a lack of support from government leaders, which Gates put down to the "distraction of the elections" in the country. A spread to Chad and the DRC poses great risks for eradication efforts and the two countries carry 58 percent of the total cases of polio this year.
"The key point is to help them get it right, many very, very poor countries do have 90 percent coverage rates. It is not about trained doctors or anything complicated," Gates said. When vaccines save lives it is "not because of hospitals or doctors or any of the expensive stuff. It doesn't require fancy equipment, simply keeping the vaccination cold and getting them out to all the kids."
In Burkina Faso a new meningitis vaccine was rolled out in December 2010 and is showing encouraging results.
In the first 12 weeks of this year there have been only two cases of meningitis in the country compared to 66 in the same period last year, Gates is set to announce.
MenAfriVac is the first vaccine developed specifically for Africa in a bid to stop deadly epidemics in the 25-country meningitis belt, which spreads from Senegal to Ethiopia.
If it is introduced throughout southern Africa, the resulting reduction in meningitis cases could free up to $120 million from national budgets by 2010, according to the World Health Organisation. For Gates, when it comes to vaccines, a little goes a long way, and any initial money spent in getting the medicines out there has a massive impact in terms of lives and eventually millions saved in healthcare spending.
"As you improve health you are allowing people to develop and be educated."
The Microsoft founder has donated US$10 billion of his sizeable fortune to bring vaccines to children in the next decade, calling on others to invest in vaccines as a cost-effective way to save lives and boost development. His goal? Five or six new vaccines at an affordable price, and that every country has a system to deliver these vaccines to all children.
"For kids the malaria vaccine would be the next best thing. The funders need to stay behind that research despite the budget challenges they face," said Gates. - AFP.
Labels: POPULATION CONTROL, VACCINES
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(NEWZIMBABWE, DAILY MAIL UK) Aids vaccine 'could remove all trace of disease'
Aids vaccine 'could remove all trace of disease'
by dailymail.co.uk
12/05/2011 00:00:00
AN EXPERIMENTAL drug helped monkeys with a form of the Aids virus control the infection for more than a year, suggesting it may lead to a vaccine for people, or even a cure.
Researchers said Cytomegalovirus (CMV) works by priming the immune system to quickly attack the HIV virus when it first enters the body, a point at which the virus is most vulnerable.
Dr Louis Picker of the Oregon National Primate Research Centre, whose study appears in the journal Nature, said he thinks it will be possible to have a vaccine ready to test in people within three years.
CMV enables the immune system to be constantly on the alert for HIV.
Researchers used different versions of the vaccine against a monkey form of the Aids virus, SIV (Simian Immunodeficiency Virus) with outstanding results.
More than half the rhesus macaques treated responded to the point where even the most sensitive tests detected no signs of SIV.
To date, most of the animals have maintained control over the virus for more than a year, gradually showing no indication that they had ever been infected.
Unvaccinated monkeys infected with SIV went on to develop the monkey equivalent of Aids, caused by the collapse of their immune systems.
The findings suggest the vaccine could be effective enough to rid the body of immunodeficiency virus completely, according to the scientists writing in the journal Nature.
Conventional antiretroviral therapies are able to control HIV infection, but cannot clear the virus from its hiding places within the immune system's white blood cells.
Dr Picker said: “The next step in vaccine development is to test the vaccine candidate in clinical trials in humans.
“For a human vaccine, the CMV vector would be weakened sufficiently so that it does not cause illness, but will still protect against HIV.”
CMV belongs to the herpes family of viruses, and like other members of the group, never leaves the body once an infection has occurred.
An estimated half of all adults in the UK carry CMV but suffer no or few symptoms. The virus is spread through bodily fluids such as saliva and urine.
When symptoms do occur, they are similar to those of flu including a high temperature and swollen glands and tiredness. People with weakened immune systems can have a more severe response.
“What’s exciting about these findings is that for the first time a vaccine candidate has been able to fully control the virus in some animals,” said Dr Wayne Koff, chief scientific officer at the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), which helped fund the research.
Koff said the findings also suggested the possibility that the immune system may eventually eliminate the virus altogether.
“This research gives us potential clues as to how we might design an HIV vaccine for humans that would provide the same type of control,” he said.
There is no cure for Aids, but cocktails of drugs can keep the disease at bay for many years.
The human immunodeficiency virus that causes Aids infects 33.3million people globally, according to the United Nations agency UNAIDS. It has killed more than 25 million people.
Because it is spread in so many ways - during sex, on needles shared by drug users, in breast milk and in blood - there is no single easy way to prevent infection.
A vaccine is the best hope, and many drug companies and scientific research groups are working on various ways to try to develop one.
“The breakthrough here is in using a viral-delivered vaccine that persists - essentially using an engineered virus to thwart a pathogenic virus,’ said Robin Shattock, a professor of mucosal infection and immunity at Britain’s Imperial College, who was not involved in the research.
“Before this, scientists had pretty much given up on the idea of a vaccine that could control HIV replication. This puts it firmly back on the agenda.”
Efforts so far to make an Aids vaccine have not been successful, but a 2009 study in Thailand involving 16,000 people showed for the first time that a vaccine could safely prevent HIV infection in a small number of volunteers.
Dr Picker said the next step is to make a weaker version of the CMV virus to make sure it does not cause any problems in people.
“The concern would be if we move a virus that is not modified that in some small number it might cause disease,” he said.
Labels: HIV/AIDS, VACCINES
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Cuba registers first lung cancer vaccine
By Larry Moonze in Havana, Cuba
Sunday June 29, 2008 [04:00]
CUBA has registered a first vaccine for the treatment of advanced lung cancer. Molecular Immunology Centre project head Dr Gisela Gonzalez said the vaccine CimaVax EGF increased the length and quality of patients' lives. Dr Gonzalez said clinical testing of the drug began in Cuba in 1995 with over 400 patients with advanced lung cancer. Dr Gonzalez said those patients had previously received traditional chemotherapy or radiotherapy.
The drug is said to improve breathing, which is usually a problem to people suffering from lung cancer.
Apart from breathe, Dr Gonzalez said the drug improved appetite and better pain management, aiding patients to lead fairly normal lives. According to Dr Gonzalez, the vaccine had no side effects. It consisted of two proteins with one that stimulated epidermal growth and P-64 K from the membrane.
Dr Gonzalez said five first phase clinical tests had been carried out and two-second phase tests including one in Cuba and another in Canada and England.
"The clinical benefits to the patents were notable during phase-two testing after which the CIM filed a request to register the vaccine," said Dr Gonzalez.
"The third clinical test is currently taking place in 11 Cuban hospitals involving 579 patients and in August this year, phase two testing of the drug will take place in Peru and later in China."
Labels: CUBA, VACCINES
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High hopes for TB vaccine
By Fergus Walsh
Medical correspondent, BBC News
Achanté, 2, is one of those who has been immunised
Trials in children of a new TB vaccine are underway in South Africa.
The experimental jab was developed by scientists at Oxford University, and I travelled to witness the trial first hand in Worcester, north of Cape Town. In a large garden outside a small vaccine clinic, a group of boisterous two, three and four-year-olds is playing. Their mothers sit in the shade watching. All these children are taking part in a vital stage of a vaccine trial.
They will be among the first children in the world to receive an experimental vaccine known as MVA85A.
There is already one TB vaccine - BCG. It is no longer routinely used in the UK, but is given at birth throughout the developing world.
The problem is that BCG is not very effective - a fact made plain when you consider that more than 1.5m people a year die still die from TB.
The aim of the new vaccine is that it should be used as a booster, in addition to BCG.
Bereavement
I watched as first one, then another child was injected. Karin Beukes breastfed her two-year-old daughter Achanté to comfort her, as the needle went in.
Simthembile,3, has received also the jab
She has good reason to volunteer her daughter.
"My former partner died from TB," she told me. "I had TB five years ago and was very sick -that's why I want Achanté to be protected."
The second child to be immunised was three-year-old Simthembile.
He didn't even blink as he was injected - the nurse said he deserved a lolly for being so good.
Later I went home with him and his mother.
They live in a makeshift house in Mandela - an informal settlement in Worcester.
The small houses are single storey shacks, part wood, part mud bricks and corrugated iron.
Densely crowded with several people sleeping per room, these homes make ideal conditions for the spread of the bacterial disease.
Huge potential impact
The vaccine is also being tested on adults with HIV.
TB is the leading cause of death among people with HIV in South Africa.
One of the volunteers, Nandipa, told me she knew several people with HIV who had died of TB.
The vaccine was not developed in the research labs of a large pharmaceutical company.
Rather it is the brainchild of a scientist at Oxford University.
Dr Helen McShane, who is funded by the Wellcome Trust, says an effective new vaccine would have a huge impact throughout the world.
"It would reduce mortality and morbidity from this disease - obvioulsy in the developing world where the need is greatest," she said.
"But it would also be of use in areas of Europe and indeed the UK where BCG is routinely given because the prevalence of TB is so high."
Long process
Developing any new vaccine is a lengthy process.
Infected sputum samples help scientists develop the vaccine
Human testing of the new TB vaccine started six years ago, but there are still another eight years of trials needed before it could be licensed.
Most of the trials to date have been to assess safety and scientists are confident that it does no harm.
Furthermore, they know that it induces a significant immune response - stimulating T-cells - exactly what they hope an effective vaccine would do.
But the proof of concept trial will not begin until next year.
If that is successful the vaccine will go into what's called a phase three trial involving perhaps 8,000 participants.
A licence might come in 2015 - but there is no guarantee that it will be successful.
After decades of inactivity when the world seemed to have turned its back on the disease, there are five other novel TB vaccines being developed.
None is as far advanced as MVA85A, but we'll have to wait a number of years before we know which, if any, is ultimately successful.
Labels: SOUTH AFRICA, VACCINES
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Officials say drug caused Nigeria polio By MARIA CHENG, AP Medical Writer
Fri Oct 5, 3:55 PM ET
LONDON - A polio outbreak in Nigeria was caused by the vaccine designed to stop it, international health officials say, leaving at least 69 children paralyzed. It is a frightening paradox in a part of the world that already distrusts western vaccines, making it even tougher to stamp out age-old diseases.
The outbreak was caused by the live polio virus that is used in vaccines given orally — the preferred method in developing countries because it is cheaper and doesn't require medical training to dispense.
"This vaccine is the most effective tool we have against the virus, but it's like fighting fire with fire," said Olen Kew, a virologist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC and the World Health Organization announced the cause of the polio outbreak last week, even though they knew about it last year.
Outbreaks caused by the oral vaccine's live virus have happened before. But the continuing Nigerian outbreak is the biggest ever caused by the vaccine. It also follows a nearly yearlong boycott of the vaccine in Africa's most populous country because of unfounded fears the vaccine was a Western plot to sterilize Muslims.
Officials now worry that the latest vaccine-caused Nigerian outbreak could trigger another vaccine scare.
Experts say such outbreaks only happen when too few children are vaccinated. In northern Nigeria, only about 39 percent of children are fully protected against polio.
The oral polio vaccine contains a weakened version of polio virus. Children who have been vaccinated excrete the virus, and in unsanitary conditions it can end up in the water supply, spreading to unvaccinated children.
In rare instances, as the virus passes through unimmunized children, it can mutate into a form that is dangerous enough to spark new outbreaks.
In 2001, officials reported that 22 children were paralyzed from polio in the Dominican Republic and Haiti in this way. Subsequent vaccine-caused polio outbreaks have occurred in the Philippines, Madagascar, China and Indonesia.
In the West, the polio vaccine is given as a shot and uses an inactivated virus, but that method is more expensive and requires training.
In Nigeria, the outbreak comes "in the wake of all the other problems they've had in," said Dr. Donald A. Henderson, who led WHO's smallpox eradication campaign in the 1970s.
In 2003, politicians in northern Nigeria canceled vaccination campaigns for nearly a year, claiming the vaccine was a Western plot to sterilize Muslims. That led to an explosion of polio, and the virus jumped to about two dozen countries.
Now, health officials' decision to keep quiet about the cause of the outbreak for so long may look suspicious.
Dr. David Heymann, WHO's top polio official, said that because the organization considered the outbreak to be a problem for scientists and not something that would change global vaccination practices, they thought it was was unnecessary to immediately share publicly.
CDC's Kew added: "The people who are against immunization may seize on anything that could strengthen their position, even if it's scientifically untenable."
Rumors are still rife among Nigerians that the vaccine is unsafe, and several religious leaders continue to lecture on its dangers. Another mass vaccine boycott could lead to further polio spread, derailing long-standing eradication efforts for good.
Nigerian health officials contacted by The Associated Press declined to comment on the situation.
"Convincing the Nigerians to take even more of this vaccine will be a tough sell," said Dr. Samuel Katz, an infectious diseases specialist at Duke University and co-inventor of the measles vaccine.
More than 10 billion polio doses have been given to children worldwide, and the vaccine has been credited with cutting polio incidence by more than 99 percent since 1988. Far more children are paralyzed by the wild polio virus than the virus spread by the oral vaccine. But no vaccine is risk-free.
WHO said that changing the vaccination strategy is unnecessary. "It would be nice if we had a more stable oral polio vaccine, but that's not the way it is today," Heymann said. "We will continue working the way we have been working because we don't want children to be paralyzed anywhere."
Labels: DRUGS, NIGERIA, VACCINES
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