JanaSwasthyaPAPH

Dr Maya Valecha in conversation with People's Alliance for Public Health Our Union government has given top priority to vaccination against cervical cancer in this year's interim budget. Since most people in our country have never heard of this disease nor are they aware of the existence of the associated virus, so Poonam Pandey had to die and get resurrected to make the names cervical cancer and human papilloma virus (HPV) familiar to Indians. However, the news and buzz that surely does not reach us is about the heated debate which is going on at present as to whether this new vaccine should be included in our Universal Immunisation Programme. Also, the news related to the death of children after taking this vaccine in recent years seem to vanish miraculously from the internet. The news of death of tribal girls in Andhra Pradesh (2010) due to controversial clinical trials of this vaccine and the report of the parliamentary investigatory committee (2013) that followed have been totally forgotten. Post-p(l)andemic, the burden of non communicable diseases like hypertension, diabetes, heart diseases, auto immune disorders, etc is increasing at an alarming rate in our country. We can only estimate this rate from secondary data sources. Post-pandemic health related data is totally missing in the democratic public sphere of our country. The government is clearly suppressing health data and spending the tax payers money almost entirely on vaccines and a handful of communicable diseases. The Union and state governments are following the roadmap laid out for them by the Pharma companies who also dictate policies at the World Health Organisation. Today with us on our Channel we have Dr Maya Valecha, renowned Gynaecologist and public health activist from Gujarat, breaking the myths about the cervical cancer and it's vaccine.