Context:
The Serum Institute of India (SII)’s vaccine Cervavac recently received the Drugs Controller General of India’s (DGCI) approval for market authorisation.
Relevance:
GS III- Science and Technology
Dimensions of the Article:
- About Cervavac
- About Cervical cancer
About Cervavac:
- Cervavac is India’s first quadrivalent human papillomavirus vaccine (qHPV) vaccine, and intended to protect women against cervical cancer.
- Experts see this as a real opportunity to eliminate cervical cancer, and have expressed the hope that it will be rolled out in national HPV vaccination strategies, and be available a cost more affordable than existing vaccines.
- The vaccine is based on VLP (virus like particles), similar to the hepatitis B vaccine, and provides protection by generating antibodies against the HPV virus’s L1 protein.
- Experts have expressed hope that the DGCI approval will allow the government to procure enough HPV vaccines at a special price to vaccinate nearly 50 million girls aged 9–14 years in India who are waiting to receive the vaccine.
- This will be a huge step to accelerate cervical cancer elimination in India and globally, a statement from IARC-WHO has said.
About Cervical cancer:
- Cervical cancer is preventable, but kills one woman every eight minutes in the country.
- It is preventable as long as it is detected early and managed effectively.
- Cervical cancer is a common sexually transmitted infection.
- Long-lasting infection with certain types of HPV is the main cause of cervical cancer.
- Worldwide, cervical cancer is the second most common cancer type and the second most common cause of cancer death in women of reproductive age (15–44).
- India accounts for about a fifth of the global burden, with 1.23 lakh cases and around 67,000 deaths per year according to the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC-WHO).
Existing vaccines
- Two vaccines licensed globally are available in India — a quadrivalent vaccine (Gardasil, from Merck) and a bivalent vaccine (Cervarix, from GlaxoSmithKline).
- Although HPV vaccination was introduced in 2008, it has yet to be included in the national immunisation programme.
-Source: Indian Express
