What the article is about:
- The article talks about approval given by DGCI (Drugs controller General of India) for home grown cervical cancel vaccine and its possible positive impacts on women’s lives.
Relevance:
- GS2: issues relating to development and management of social sector/services relating to health, education, Human Resources.
Analysis:
- DGCI granted approval to Pune based serum institute to manufacture the country’s first indigenous developed vaccine, Cervavac, against the HPV( Human papillomavirus).
HPV Infection (Human papillomavirus):
- caused by a DNA virus from the Papillomaviridae family. Many HPV infections cause no symptoms and 90% resolve spontaneously within two years.
- Nearly all cervical cancer is due to HPV and two strains – HPV16 and HPV18 – account for 70% of cases.
Severity of HPV:
- HPV is a common pathogen, but only a small proportion of its strain cause cancer.
- In India cervical cancel caused by HPV kills more than 60,000 women annually.
- The ministry of health and family welfare’s data show that there are more than 4 lakh cervical cancer patients in the country at any given time.
Why approval of homegrown vaccine could be a game changer:
- In 2018, the national technical advisory group on immunisation program recommended the inclusion of cervical cancer vaccine in the country’s universal immunisation programme.
- But high cost of vaccines manufactured by Merck and glaxo smithkline, proved to b deterrent (regimen costs upwards of RS 4000).
- According to WHO , a vast majority of cervical cancer deaths happen in middle and low income countries.
Therefore, this approval by DGCI could be a game changer for India’s health care system.
