Africa-Press – Tanzania. GIRLS and boys aged between 10 and 14 are targeted to benefit from the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccine education against cancer of the cervix and other integrated services in Mbeya and Songwe regions.
The project is under the support of UN Children’s Fund-funded HPV+ project led by Jhpiego.
Speaking during the inception meeting with the regional immunisation stakeholders and partners, the HPV+ project Manager Dr Maryrose Giattas said the scheme has been rolledout to improve coverage of HPV vaccination for the second dose in Songwe and Mbeya regions.
She said the said groups will also benefit with other adolescent sexual reproductive health services, including nutrition.
“The HPV+ project will strengthen service provision in 200 health facilities in Mbeya and Songwe regions and apart from the HPV vaccine, we will also integrate with other services like sexual reproductive health, nutrition and menstrual hygiene management education to girls,” she added.
Mbeya Regional Medical Officer Dr Salum Manyatta thanked Jhpiego for considering Mbeya and Songwe as their implementation regions through the Unicef support.
He said the Regional Health Management Team and all councils in Mbeya will always provide necessary support to partners like Jhpiego who compliment government effort to ensure there is universal coverage of health services to its people.
“We really appreciate for this support and as regional government, we will work together to address these challenges, especially to ensure adolescent girls and boys have access to friendly services — including addressing cervical cancer through HPV vaccination, reducing new HIV infections and prevention of pregnancy,” he noted.
Earlier, presenting the immunisation status for Mbeya, the Regional Immunisation Officer, Mr Danford Barnaba, said the region has attained only 77 per cent of the immunisation coverage to girls aged 14 years on the second dose of HPV from January to October 2020 results.
“With this support from Jhpiego through this project, we are confident that we will increase community demand for adolescent friendly services and provide HPV immunisation to all target group and also build capacity to our health care workers in all councils,” he added.
Cervical cancer is the most common cancer among women and the leading cause of cancer related morbidity and mortality in women in Tanzania.
Giving the country status on cervical Cancer, Dr Maryrose said Tanzania suffers one of the highest cervical cancer burden.
Globally, cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer among women with an estimated 570,000 new cases and 311,000 deaths in 2018.
According to the WHO, lack of urgent effort to scale-up of cervical cancer prevention services contribute to increasing the number of deaths to 460,000 deaths by 2040, which is nearly 50 per cent over the 2018 levels and nearly 90 per cent of these deaths will be in low-and-middleincome countries.
