Vaccine campaigners host vigil in Cork

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Written by Mary O’ Keeffe

Thursday, 11 December 2008

Campaigners, public representatives, parents and children held a candlelit vigil in Cork last night (Wednesday, December 10) in a bid to voice their feeling about the withdrawal of the HPV vaccine programme. Last month the government announced that it was withdrawing the scheme which would have cost an estimated €9.7 million annually.

Since then, campaigners have urged the Health Minister, Mary Harney to reverse her decision and reinstate the HPV vaccine programme.

In just a few weeks more than 10,000 Facebook members have added their support to an online campaign to show their discontent with the decision.

Last night's vigil, which coincided with a second vigil in Dublin, was one of the latest steps in the campaign to ask the Minister to overturn the move. The event was addressed by Labour's Cllr Catherine Clancy who has consistently voiced her opposition to the move. Speaking ahead of the event, Cllr Clancy said, "The decision made by Minister Harney to not carry out the vaccine programme completely flies in the face of what she said when she announced the scheme. At the time she accepted the expert advice that the introduction of a universal, high uptake, vaccination programme for young girls, in conjunction with popular based cervical screening could significantly reduce overall cervical cancer rates. The Government is now hailing screening as the be all and end all when experts in the field are calling for both the vaccine and screening, they are not mutually exclusive."

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