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Activists and medical workers in Egypt seek to raise awareness and education about the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus (HPV), which can be avoided by obtaining a vaccine.

According to the American “CNN” network, “the reluctance of many doctors and conservative parents to give the human papillomavirus vaccine to young girls is an overlooked problem” in Egypt, according to activists.

Experts explain that the problem “stems from a lack of awareness and understanding of the virus, as well as the persistence of social stigma as a sexually transmitted disease.”

This led to the suffering of a large number of women after infection with the human papilloma virus, experts say, which is the virus that causes more than 95 percent of cervical cancer cases, according to the World Health Organization.

According to the World Health Organization, cervical cancer is the fourth most common type of cancer among women. And in 2020, it led to the death of about 342,000 women worldwide.

About 90 percent of cases and deaths in 2020 were in low- and middle-income countries, of which Egypt is one, according to the World Bank.

“The main problem is that this vaccination is not common in the Global South,” said Lubna Darwish, responsible for the gender and women’s issues file at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, which launched an awareness campaign in March 2022, referring to low-income countries.

She added, “Very few countries in the Global South are already doing (granting routine HPV vaccines), and Egypt has an opportunity to be one of the leading countries (in this programme).”

Slow progress
The Egyptian Ministry of Health published brief awareness posts on its social media platforms about the virus, noting some of its main symptoms, and asked women to “schedule an appointment for routine check-ups.”

The ministry also advised women to get the HPV vaccine.

Human papillomavirus infection causes the appearance of growths on the skin or mucous membranes (warts), according to the Mayo Clinic.

And in 2020, WHO launched the Global Strategy to Accelerate the End of Cervical Cancer, the first-ever global commitment to end cancer.

The organization has set a goal of fully vaccinating 90 percent of girls against HPV by the age of 15.

However, progress has been slow in Egypt for several reasons, including a lack of awareness of the virus, social stigma around sex, and bad advice from some doctors, according to CNN.

In addition, the vaccine is not subsidized in Egypt, which makes obtaining it a “luxury” for many, in a country facing a severe economic crisis that has affected ordinary citizens.

Since September 2022, a member of the Egyptian Parliament, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Mansoura University, Nisreen Omar, has adopted a campaign to routinely vaccinate all children in Egypt with the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, within the state’s health care system.

Those efforts received a boost in January, when the House of Representatives accepted her request and sent a formal recommendation to the Minister of Health.

Many are waiting to see the fruits of years of campaigning for this vaccine, hoping to put an end to a preventable virus that could be a “silent killer”. (free)

2023-08-26 07:26:52

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