School girls to be vaccinated

By OGIA MIAMEL

Girls aged between 9 and 14 years in primary schools in National Capital District will be given the human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine from next month.
National HPV vaccine programme coordinator Dr Edward Waramin told The National at the official launching yesterday that they would have three teams of nurses going into the schools each day on the second week of April to vaccinate the girls class by class.
“We estimate that say in four weeks, we would have completed all the schools in NCD,” he said.
In terms of moving forward when we see the amount of coverage and how many we are able to vaccinate, they will be analysed and then from there we try to make estimation based on the population of each province so we will then move to the provinces in 2018,” Waramin said.
“It will depend on several things, one of those is how prepared are the provinces? Meaning that they must have good vaccine fridges to keep the vaccines safely until we use them.
“As well as how soon we procure and buy vaccines from the supplier, so with all those factors considered we will move to the provinces.
“It’s basically an open plan at the moment, we will consult with health officials in each of the provinces to see which one of them is ready for the vaccine,” Waramin said.
He said they would train teachers before going into the schools because the teachers would assist the teams in registering the children and putting them into age groups to determine who would be vaccinated.