Cervical Cancer Vaccine in India

One of the recent concerns regarding the field of cancer study or Oncology is the increasing number of women who are being diagnosed with Cancer. It is estimated that the number of cervical cancer deaths in women in India is likely to rise to 79,000 by the year 2010, while the number of deaths due to breast cancer and oral cancer would rise to 59,000 and 53,000 respectively. As the numbers indicate, cervical cancer is the most dangerous among others. Most number of women deaths reported in India are mainly due to this dangerous forms of cancer.
The multinational giants, Merck and GlaxoSmithKline have marketed the vaccines Gardasil and Cervarix respectively in the foreign countries. In some of the countries like USA the vaccination of the girl before school admission is to be made must legally in the coming days. But these vaccines are still not available in Indian market, though the number of patients are high.Indian Government is tying up with a multinational company to bring a cost effective vaccine that is expected to combat cervical cancer. The Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss on the occasion of National Cancer Awareness Day said that the high rate of cervical cancer has been instrumental behind the initiative.
The Indian Council of Medical Research has already started mobilizing things to implement the plan in association with Merck which has produced the vaccine. Trial of the vaccine on 13 to 15-year-old girls has already taken place in South Africa and the trials is believed to take place in India on women above 18 years.Once the trials are completed in a few months time, the vaccine can be made available in the country. The vaccine is against the Human Paillioma Virus (HPV), a major cause of cervical cancer in women.

To strengthen research activities, the ICMR is already trying to establish linkages with other international institutes. The ICMR is expected to establish an association with Lyon-based International Agency for Research in Cancer (IARC), which would bring a lot of investment to India.

Vaccination against Hepatitis B would become part of the national immunization schedule by the next financial year. According to the FDA and CDC, the vaccine has only minor side effects, such as soreness around the injection area. The FDA and CDC consider the vaccine to be completely safe. It does not contain mercury, thimerosal or live or dead virus, only virus-like particles, which cannot reproduce in the human body. The cost of the vaccine is the major matter of concern when it is marketed in India.

The decision to make the vaccine available in the country will be a good attempt to reduce the number of cervical cancer patients. The moves to get the vaccine in the market are very fast as indicated by all the media very recently.