The Government through the Ministry of Health must restart the nationwide human papillomavirus(HPV) vaccination programme for 13-year-old girls in secondary schools in Malaysia next year
On top of that they must prioritise implementing a comprehensive catch-up vaccination programme in 2023 for girls who missed their shots from 2020 to 2022 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
I welcome the statement by Health Minister YB Khairy Jamaluddin that reaffirmed that he sees cervical cancer as a disease that can be eliminated at the Ministry of Health Townhall session yesterday in Sarawak General Hospital (SGH).
Cervical cancer is the third most common cancer among women in Malaysia and is mainly caused by HPV.
HPV vaccines, by preventing HPV infections, protect individuals against 90 per cent of HPV-related cancers.
That is why a comprehensive blue print to ensure its proper implementation of the vaccination program is a top priority and it must be clearly reflected in the upcoming Budget 2022/2023.
Recently, The National Cancer Society of Malaysia (NCSM) released a really worrying statistics where over half a million teenage girls in Malaysian secondary schools are estimated to have missed their HPV jabs due to school closures during the pandemic and diversion of funding to Covid programmes.
Based on the HPV vaccination rate in previous years, at least 176,944 and 186,593 13-year-old girls would have missed their HPV shots in the disruption of the National Immunisation Programme (NIP) in 2020 and 2021 respectively.
A further 200,000 girls in this cohort are estimated to have missed out their vaccinations this year, leading to at least 560,000 teenagers in Malaysian secondary schools missing out on their HPV vaccination that prevents cervical cancer.
Based on their report, there is a reduction of inoculations across almost all state from 2020 to 2022.
In Sarawak, we see a reduction of successful inoculations from 30% in 2020 to 12.5% in 2022.
This year, not a single district or zone in Kedah, Penang, Perlis, Johor, and the three Federal Territories of Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya, and Labuan reported successful HPV inoculation programmes.
This worrying statistics has to be taken seriously and thus the urgent need to restart and re-prioritise the vaccination programme on top of implementing a comprehensive catch-up plan to better protect our girls from this deadly virus.
Such a issue also should not be in the hands of only the Federal Government or the Ministry of Health, but also on the agenda of State Governments and other Ministries such as the Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development, whether on a federal or state level.
I do hope such plans will be clearly reflected both in the 2022/2023 budget and in the Health White Paper that Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin intends to table in Parliament by year end.