By year’s end, the Ghana Health Service (GHS) will launch a vaccination campaign aimed at pre-adolescents aged 9 to 14,, with the goal of lowering the human papillomavirus prevalence among Ghanaian women.
The goal of this national immunization program is to vaccinate adolescents prior to engaging in sexual activity, in light of the concerning incidence of cervical cancer.
Dr. Kwame Amponsah-Achiano, the programs manager for the Ghana Health Service’s Expanded Programme on Immunization, stressed the importance of administering the two-dose vaccination to every child.
Our focus is typically on young people before they start their sexual debut, and we will roll out a nationwide vaccination because we have already completed a pilot program that was intended to teach us valuable lessons.
Therefore, we ought to have begun the vaccination by year’s end.
“We were required to administer three doses during the piloting phase, then it was reduced to two, and now we are discussing one. However, the one dose is also predicated on the requirement for a well-established screening process, so we will probably administer two doses as that is the best option presented.”
10.6 million women in Ghana who are 15 years of age or older are at risk of developing cervical cancer, according to the ICO/IARC Information Centre on HPV and Cancer. According to current estimates, 1699 women lose their lives to cervical cancer each year, while 2797 women receive a diagnosis.
In Ghana, cervical cancer is the second most common cancer among women overall and among those between the ages of 15 and 44. Information about the prevalence of HPV in Ghana’s general population is currently unavailable.
However, in Ghana’s home region of Western Africa, an estimated 4.3% of women in general are estimated to be infected with HPV16/18 at any given time, and HPVs 16 or 18 are linked to 55.6% of invasive cervical cancer cases.
