***The Deadly Cervical Cancer Vaccine Bazaar - Health Authorities' Cover Up

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The Deadly Cervical Cancer Vaccine Bazaar -

Health Authorities' Cover Up

From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 7, Issue 11, Dated

March 20, 2010

The

Cervical Cancer Bazaar

 

 

YOUNG GIRLS ARE BEING GIVEN ANTI-CANCER JABS,

WITH DUBIOUS RESULTS, FIND SHANTANU GUHA RAY AND KUNAL MAJUMDER

 

 

 

 

 

Photo: VIJAY PANDEY

 

 

EACH

TIME Nageshwara and Venkatamma are asked about Sarita, the farm

labourers point to a framed photograph of their daughter. And then they

huddle near the entrance of their one-room house in Khammam district of

Andhra Pradesh and weep inconsolably, recounting a tale of death that

came home without warning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

LETHAL DOSE? Maramma’s daughter Sayamma died

within seven weeks of being vaccinated

Photo: KUNAL MAJUMDER

 

 

On

January 21 this year, Venkatamma found the motionless body of her

13-year-old daughter on the floor. At first she thought her daughter —

a student of Lakshminagaram Residential Hostel — had consumed pesticide

to commit suicide, possibly after a failed love affair. But the

pesticide bottle was intact on the shelf. Sarita was rushed to the

nearest healthcare centre where a small team of paramedics and a doctor

confirmed that it wasn’t a case of poisoning and referred Sarita to the

Bhadrachalam area hospital, 25 km from their house in Anjupaka village.

En route, Sarita had a severe epileptic fit. Doctors at the hospital

declared that she was “brought dead” and conducted a postmortem. The

report was not handed to the parents. At the Nallipaka Public Health

Centre (PHC)—which records all births and deaths in the region —

Sarita’s death was recorded as suicide. Nageshwara and Venkatamma

refused to accept this and cremated their daughter under protest.

 

 

“My

daughter did not commit suicide. She did not consume poison,”

Nageshwara says firmly. “She had started having fits after the vaccine.

She told us, so did the hostel supervisor. The hospital officers are

lying.” Dr R Balasudha, a paramedic at the PHC in the Narshapuram block

under which Anjupaka village falls, adds: “Sarita was not dead when she

was brought to the PHC. She did not consume any poison. She was having

severe bouts of epileptic attacks and was very, very sick.”

 

 

Sarita’s

hapless parents learned of a similar death on August 30 last year in

Yerragattu village, 60 km from Bhadrachalam. Another 13-year-old, Sodi

Sayamma, had died there, with doctors calling it a suicide. But

Sayamma’s parents, also farm labourers, said their daughter had not

consumed poison or hanged herself. In both cases, the PHCS confirmed

the girls had not consumed poison and referred the cases to the

Bhadrachalam area hospital. Interestingly, the PHCs — one in

Gowrideviteta block covering Yerragattu village and another in

Narshapuram block — were responsible for administering the vaccine for

the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) in these villages.

 

 

The

HPV, which is transmitted sexually, is one of the many known causes of

cervical cancer. Gardasil, the commercially licensed HPV vaccine

produced by Merck Sharp and Dohme (MSD), an affiliate of US-based

pharmaceutical giant Merck and Co Inc, is supposed to prevent cervical

cancer when administered to pre-puberty girls. The Indian unit of the

Seattle-based PATH, one of the world’s largest healthcare NGOs, began

the HPV vaccination drive on July 9 last year as a demonstration

project in Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat. Part of the goal was to

vaccinate 14,000 girls in Khammam district — a large percentage of them

from poor, tribal families — with three doses of Gardasil. The three

zones selected in the district were Thirumalayapalem (urban),

Kothagudem (rural) and Bhadrachalam (tribal).

 

 

The controversial Glaxo SmithKline campaign 

that was banned by the Health Ministry

 

 

BUT

THE drive raises serious ethical questions. Did the producers of this

drug and their field partners declare the full range of possible

side-effects? Did the parents of these minors give “informed” consent?

What is the criterion on which the target population for the vaccine

was selected? And are there sufficient screening mechanisms in place to

report and check on any “adverse events” or side-effects?

 

 

Sources

in Hyderabad say that D Nagender, the Andhra Pradesh Health and Family

Welfare Minister, worked closely with PATH and the Indian Council of

Medical Research (ICMR) on the project. The ministry says the blocks

were chosen because of high incidence of cervical cancer in the region.

But this claim is disputed by many. “There is no document available to

prove this. It is a blatant lie,” says NB Sarojini of the Sama Resource

Group for Women and Health, which, along with 80 other health networks

and medical practitioners, sent a memorandum last October to the health

ministry on the issue.

 

 

PATH

claims the side-effects associated with the vaccine are negligible —

nothing more than a “pain in the arm after a jab”. However,

organisations like the US-based Judicial Watch and the Vaccine Adverse

Events Reporting System (VAERS), a US government body, list a range of

potential side-effects associated with the Gardasil vaccine. Among them

are blood clots, auto-immune disorders, seizures, epileptic fits and

severe allergies.

 

 

In

Khammam, besides Sayamma and Sarita’s deaths, around 120 students

developed complications after the vaccination — ranging from epileptic

fits, allergies, diarrhoea, dizziness and nausea. News of this first

began to emerge in small reports on TV 9, a regional news channel. Dr R

Balasudha, a medical officer at the Narshapuram PHC, confirms this.

This PHC was one of the four targeted for the drive in Bhadrachalam

block from July 16, 2009 to February 28, 2010. Dr Shekhar, associated

with the Nallipaka PHC, who had a target of 2,400 children but could

manage only 1,800 till February 27, adds: “Many developed

complications, but we don’t know if they turned serious since we aren’t

in touch with the girls.”

 

 

“This

is a very serious cover-up,” says CPM leader Brinda Karat, who plans to

raise the issue in Parliament. “India needs to be careful about the

side-effects of these vaccines and a detailed investigation should be

done by the Health Ministry as to why these tribal and semi-literate

girls were picked for such a drive. It is a wrong notion, nurtured by

many, that tribal girls are more sexually active and hence should be

targeted for such drives,” says Karat, who came to know about the

matter recently through the Andhra Pradesh unit of the All India

Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA).

image

 

 

 

 

 

 

NUMBERS GAME. NGO PATH says 32,000 

girls in the 10-14 age group will be

vaccinated in 

Khamman during the first phase

 

 

PATH,

which asserts that it has followed every international guideline in

conducting the demonstration project, however, seems to be trying hard

to limit the damage caused by the deaths and the disclosures of

side-effects. “We were only commissioned by the Welfare Department of

the Andhra Pradesh Government and were not involved in physically

administering the vaccine. We were the technical partner and just went

along with the state government team,” says a top PATH official,

without disclosing the amount the organisation received to implement

the demonstration project, titled the PATH-ICMR

Post-licensure Observational Study of HPV vaccination

funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

IMMUNE? District Immunity Officer Dr B

Jaikumar 

was responsible for the vaccination of 14,000

girls in 

Khammam district

Photo: KUNAL MAJUMDER

 

 

“If

there is a problem with the vaccine, it is for MSD to respond, not us,”

says the PATH official, adding that the NGO plans to administer the

vaccine to 18,000 more girls in Khammam this year, to help determine if

this vaccine can be included in the National Vaccination Scheme. “We

firmly believe this is the least risky vaccine available to prevent

cervical cancer and we want to help make it available to the poorest

sections of our society. We are bound by confidentiality clauses and

cannot reveal any details about any ‘adverse events’. All we can say is

that we are monitoring it very closely and there is nothing to be

concerned about,” says another PATH representative. “Reporting such

incidents out of context will jeopardise this entire public health

programme.”

 

 

Shockingly,

however, Dr B Jaikumar, the District Immunity Officer of Khammam and

the man responsible for the drive there, says he has no idea why the

region was selected. He does not have any statistics regarding major

cancer incidence in the area, nor do he or his team have any means to

check the effectiveness of the vaccine or measure its after affects. So

why was the vaccine administered? “I am not aware of the reasons,” says

Jaikumar. “The Commissioner of Family Welfare said we have to do it

here.” Ask him if his district was being used as a human laboratory,

and he replies, “The tests have been done in the international market.”

But Jaikumar himself has not read any international medical literature

on the vaccine: It is for the state government to read such stuff, not

him, he says.