How Guardasil Is Accepted in the Middle East

The Guardasil Vaccine

I took my daughter this week to be vaccinated with the new Guardasil vaccine against HPV. It is a three-series vaccination, each of which has to be given at two-month intervals.  The cost of the first shot, translated into dollars was a whopping $192, plus another $26 for the office visit and injection.  We have two more to look forward to.

I’m an American living overseas in the Middle East, and have discussed this vaccine with some friends in America, and through blogging. I wondered how this vaccine would be accepted by people in the Middle East (since there are even some people in America who are opposed to it on the grounds that it might increase promiscuity). People in the Middle East are extremely conservative socially.  So I took the opportunity to ask my child’s doctor about this question of acceptance.

The pediatrician told me that cervical cancer is the NUMBER ONE killer of women in the North African country where I reside, far above breast cancer (which is the number two killer).  Women here can buy birth control pills right over the counter,.  While pap smears do exist, few women take advantage of them, and only go to the doctor when they already have advanced cervical cancer.

The pediatrician said that, therefore, people were not opposed to the vaccine, and this was why the government here approved this vaccine for sale so quickly (some other medicines are not available here because of lack of approval for several years after their availability in Europe or America).  The pediatrician has also given the vaccine  to her own two daughters.

What people are opposed to, however, is the price.  The pediatrician  said the series is equivalent to many people’s monthly income.  So  only the rich are taking advantage of it.

I read an article the other day which indicated we are on the edge of a new era.  With good vaccination coverage, and with boys now starting to be vaccinated as well, experts say it should take about 60 years (or about two generations to wipe out these HPV infections which cause cervical cancer).  I was born in 1955, right after the polio vaccine became public.  In 1990, I traveled to Kenya and found so many horribly crippled people which doctors told me was a result of the polio vaccine coming available there a generation later than in the United States.  This is what made me really appreciate the polio vaccine.

What a wonderful legacy this vaccine will leave to our children, what a chance for better health in the future.

–Eileen

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