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New HPV Vaccines in Laos

HPV Vaccines in Laos

Despite the changing direction of attention away from other illnesses and towards COVID since the beginning of 2020, Laos has made significant forward strides regarding HPV (human papillomavirus) and Laotian health. In March 2020, the program for HPV vaccines in Laos was founded as an active response to the high number of deaths due to cervical cancer. In Laos, at least 320 women are infected with HPV every year; 182 or around half of the sufferers die from the illness. The vaccines were first distributed in a high school in the Xaythany District in Vientiane Capital. Schools across the country administered the vaccinations shortly afterward to increase HPV prevention in 360,000 girls from the ages of 10 to 14.

Why Does This Matter?

The new vaccination program is significant considering that cervical cancer is the third most common cancer in Laos. It is also second-highest cancer to cause premature death or disability next to liver cancer. Furthermore, Laos is the eighth Southeast Asian country to have high rates of cervical cancer according to an age-standardized graph. More middle-aged women from the ages of 40 to 64 years old are diagnosed with cervical cancer each year: 197 a year compared to 62 older women and 61 younger women. Of the 197 middle-aged women who contract cervical cancer, 101 of those women die from the disease.

Logistics of the New Vaccines

Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and the government both contributed to the price of the HPV vaccines in Laos. UNICEF helped the Ministry of Health as well as the Ministry of Education and Sports to implement the vaccination of adolescent girls. The government vaccinates girls early on to battle HPV as a preventative measure as opposed to treating it at advanced stages later on in life. The vaccines work to prevent the infection of two strains of HPV, 16 and 18, which cause 70% of all cervical cancer cases due to HPV.

Vientiane Vaccinations

This is not the first time that there have been HPV vaccines in Laos. They were first introduced in 2013 as part of a demonstration of the vaccine’s effectiveness. The vaccines were confined within the Vientiane province until 2015 when the government completed the demonstration successfully. This most recent round of vaccinations was the first time the HPV vaccine was produced nationally.

Increasing Rate of HPV Vaccination

HPV vaccination in Southeast Asia is relatively new. Most countries are giving priority vaccination to illnesses like DTP (diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus) and measles. These illnesses are also the three garnering the most vaccinations worldwide. Because HPV is a newer vaccine for low and middle-income countries, there is still much to be done about the vaccination process. For example, low and middle-income countries still experience a dropout in between the first and final doses of HPV. This leaves many women at risk. Still, due to GAVI’s implementation and increasingly lower prices, countries like Laos can expect a decrease in cervical cancer fatalities.

HPV is a serious, cancer-causing infection afflicting countries all over the world. Fortunately, Laos is keeping up with other low and middle-income countries with their vaccination program. With the help of GAVI and UNICEF, Laos can increase vaccine availability and effectively combat one of the deadliest cancers in the country.

– Alyssa Ranola
Photo: Flickr

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Rwandan Government Using Drones for Health Care

Drones for Healthcare
The Rwandan government’s recent initiative to use drones for health care, delivering critical blood parcels on parachutes outside remote health centers, is a huge step forward in the use of this pioneering technology in crisis-hit areas.

As part of the program, which was kicked off last week, medical workers in health centers across the western parts of the country where the terrain makes road trips long and complicated, send requests for life-saving blood using text messages.

Using commercial drones, these packets containing the required blood are then delivered to 21 transfusing facilities in about 30 minutes, shaving off hours it would have taken using the traditional road routes. This is one more successful effort by the government to decrease the rate of maternal mortality, which stands today at 320 deaths per 100,000 live births. One of the main causes of maternal mortality is the loss of blood during and following childbirth.

While the Rwandan government is the primary driver of this program, the drones and delivery service are built and being operated by Zipline, a California-based robotics company. Rwanda’s successful experiment can be extended to many other areas of critical-care as well as outside that country.

While the current drone delivery service is focusing on blood deliveries, an international partnership between logistics giant UPS, the Vaccine Alliance, Gavi (a public-private group started by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) and Zipline are working on doing the same with vaccines.

It is easy to see how this breakthrough service can be extended to other parts of the developing world where access to lifesaving and critical health products suffers from what is termed the “last-mile problem,” which is the failure to extend medicines to remote locations which suffer from poor roads and transportation infrastructure. The set of drones, called Zips, being used in Rwanda can fly up to 150 kilometers, which should be enough in most cases to address the problem of reaching remote areas rapidly in emergencies.

Considering the situation in battle-scarred areas like Syria or Iraq, where both the terrain and the constant fighting turn civilian areas into no-fly zones, drones may well be the only solution to supply medicines, food and water to under-siege populations. Initial efforts to do that have already begun and are showing results.

Since last year, Uplift Aeronautics and the Syria Airlift Project have been flying prototype drones over the border from neighboring country on missions chosen by aid partners such as People Demand Change. Given their small size, each of these drones can carry only a few pounds of supplies which ensure they can’t be tracked by radars.

While this initiative has since been suspended for various reasons, the Rwandan government’s example shows that using drones for health care could eventually become a stable solution; providing life-saving drugs and equipment to those parts of the world where nature and man are cut off from the rest of the world is critical.

– Mallika Khanna

Photo: Flickr

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Drones Now Delivering Lifesaving Vaccines

DroneDeploying unmanned drones in low and middle-income countries could save money and increase vaccination rates, according to new research conducted by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center.

Many low- and middle-income countries struggle to deliver lifesaving vaccines to sick people who are fighting preventable diseases.

Bruce Y. Lee, director of operations at the International Vaccine Access Center at the Bloomberg School says “[We] make all these vaccines but they’re of no value if we don’t get them to the people who need them. So there is an urgent need to find new, cost-effective ways to do this.”

Currently, vaccines such as hepatitis B, tetanus, measles and rotavirus are typically transported by road through two to four storing sites before they reach clinics where the doses are finally administered to patients. The majority of vaccines require refrigeration until they are used or else they will spoil.

In addition, non-vaccine costs of routine immunization are expected to rise between 2010 and 2020, mostly derived from supply chain logistics.

In the meantime, unmanned drones have proliferated. They can traverse all land and topography, decrease labor costs and substitute the need for vehicle transportation. They have been heavily used for surveillance and in humanitarian aid delivery.

A study conducted at Johns Hopkins University found that utilizing drones to transport vaccines to their final destination could slightly increase the rate of immunization, immunizing 96 percent of the target population as compared to 94 percent using land-based transport. This simultaneously produced significant savings, eight cents for every dose administered (roughly 20 percent savings).

“Assuming the drones are reliable, are capable of making the necessary trips and have properly trained operators, they could be a less expensive means of transporting vaccines, especially in remote areas,” says Lee. He adds, “They could particularly be valuable for urgent orders.”

An initiative led by the United Parcel Service Foundation and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, has raised $800,000 grant to support the launch of a zip line drone project in Rwanda that will commence later this year. The government of Rwanda will use zip line drones to make 150 life-saving blood deliveries per day to 21 transfusing facilities in western part of the country.

According to Dr. Seth Berkley, CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, “It is a totally different way to deliver vaccines to remote communities and we are extremely interested to learn if UAVs can provide a safe, effective way to make vaccines available for some of the hardest-to-reach children.”

The Rwanda drone network has been initially focused on delivering blood supplies, but plans to expand to include vaccines and treatments for HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.

In rural Virginia, Bhutan and Papua New Guinea, drones are currently being tested for medical supply deliveries. UNICEF is also testing their viability of use in Malawi and in Tanzania.

– Sarah Poff

Photo: Pixabay