Nigeria expanding its program for HPV vaccination against cervical cancer

Originally included in the October last year standard immunization campaign, the HPV vaccination—developed to help prevent cervical cancer—was then rolled out to most Nigerian states on Monday.

Health professionals participated in a campaign to alert local villages in the southwest Oyo state of the country about the vaccination.

“We have heard about cervical cancer before now, and we are aware of the disease it causes. That’s why I asked my daughter to go get vaccinated as a preventive measure,” said Ramotalai Awoniran, following her daughter’s vaccination.

Nowadays, the HPV vaccination is offered all throughout the nation.

According to the United Nations, cervical cancer ranks as the third most common cancer in Nigeria and the second most often occurring cause of cancer mortality among women aged between 15 and 44 years.

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In the most recent year for which statistics are available, 2020 saw 12,000 new cervical cancer cases and 8,000 fatalities registered for the nation.

Unlike other vaccination campaigns, the West African nation has effectively run against all odds. Like the more than 500 languages spoken by its population of at least 210 million people, which could make communication more difficult, or the underfunded primary healthcare centers where the shots are usually given, the HPV campaign is quite different.

Nigerian officials had been intensifying campaigns both online and offline to inform people about the HPV vaccination ahead of the countrywide immunization drive.

“There are some rumors going around that they want to lower the fertility of the girls, but we have been educating the parents that this vaccination is safe; the only thing it does is prevent cervical cancer,” Lagbenro Arinlade-Ayoade, the main health care coordinator for Oyo-West, told The Associated Press.

Though the HPV vaccination has been in use in many industrialized countries for almost two decades, it has only been included in the immunization campaigns of barely half of the countries in Africa, despite the continent’s great burden.

With 100,000 women developing the disease and 70,000 deaths recorded, one in five cervical cancer deaths worldwide happened in Africa.