Grameenphone to fund pilot cervical cancer vaccination program

Grameenphone to fund pilot cervical cancer vaccination program
Grameenphone Ltd. will fund, for the first time in Bangladesh, a pilot vaccination program to prevent cervical cancer among economically disadvantaged young women.
The vaccination program will be administered by Bangladesh Medical College Hospital in collaboration with Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Medical University and Harvard University. It will be jointly conducted by a committee headed by Professor Shaila Khatun, Professor Samina Chowdhury and others. Cervical cancer is the second most common cancer in women and the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in many developing countries. It affects relatively young women and it is the largest single cause of years of life lost to cancer in the developing world. The Human Papillona Virus (HPV) accounts for a great majority of all cervical cancers worldwide. The HPV vaccine has recently been found to have the potential to prevent cervical cancer among women.
“This pilot vaccination program to prevent cervical cancer among poor young women is a great initiative. This vaccine has only recently been introduced in some developed countries like the United States, Canada and Europe and this is perhaps the first it is being planned to be administered in any developing country,” said Professor ABMF Karim, Professor Emeritus, Vrije University, Amsterdam, and Chairman of the Oncology Club and Adviser of the SAARC Federation of Oncologists. “As this type of cancer is more prevalent among poor women in our country, it is quite appropriate to target this group,” he added.
Under the pilot program, the HPV vaccination will be administered among 30 economically disadvantaged young women.
The Harvard Medical School will conduct an impact study on the vaccination program. This pilot study of evaluating the HPV vaccine in Bangladesh was proposed by Dr. Bimalangshu Dey and Dr. Annekathryn Goodman both from the Harvard Medical School. The study is designed to look at the cost implications and feasibility of possible integration of the program into routine vaccination schedules for women aged between 11 and 26 years. Additionally, issues of culture and parental attitudes will be studied. Dr. Dey is from Bangladesh and is also a Hematologic Malignancy & Bone Marrow Transplantation specialist at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Goodman is currently the head of the Gynecological Oncology Department at the Massachusetts General Hospital and a leading authority in the field of cervical cancer prevention.
“Such a program will not only carry clinical potential and academic merits, this will also open up a new avenue for greater clinical and scientific collaborations with foreign institutions worldwide. The benefits from such an initiative will be diverse and limitless,” observed Dr. Dey.