Malawi rolled out its National Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination campaign in 2019, targeting 1.5 million girls from the age of 9 to 14 to prevent cervical cancer. However, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the vaccination drive with shifting medical priorities and social distancing.
Medical aid group Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), also known as Doctors Without Borders, launched a campaign to boost the low vaccine uptake by targeting the girls at school.
MSF claims that since January, they have vaccinated about 65000 girls in 300 schools. MSF says that Malawi has the world's second-largest death rate from the disease. The rate also amounts to seven times the global average, with thousands dying every year. Before getting vaccinated, the girls are also educated about the disease.
MSF faced a lot of challenges as some parents didn't give consent due to some myths. Some parents believed that MSF is trying to make their daughters infertile by injecting the vaccine. They also believed that MSF was just vaccinating their daughters against COVID by changing the appearance of the vaccine. However, meetings with parents and village chiefs have helped to debunk these myths, and the vaccination rate has since increased.
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