By: Michael Kahn—Aleyna Castillo 9/5/08
For the first time, helping to stop cervical cancer in poor developing countries is being made possible. New screening tests and vaccines from Merck & Co and GlaxoSmithKline are now being looked at to becoming cost effective for women in developing countries. "Efforts are needed now to adapt the current price of the vaccines so they meet what individual countries can afford," Francesco Xavier Bosch of the Catalan Institute of Oncology in Barcelona told the World Cancer Congress. The full vaccines have a cost of about $360 per person, and that is way to much for poor countries to afford.
“Cervical cancer is the second most common type of cancer in women and is caused by the sexually transmitted human papilloma virus. Each year 500,000 women are diagnosed with the disease and about 300,000 die from it, mostly in the developing world.” The Asia-Pacific region accounts for over half of the cervical cancer cases, and would be able to afford the shot at $10-$25 per woman. Next is Latin America and the Carribean, and a cost effective vaccine for their women would be at about $25 per woman. It is going to require a lot of work for the company’s to come up with a way to make it cost effective for the developing nations and still make a profit. Sadly, if these cervical cancer trends continue without help, women in these developing countries will have a 75% increase of cervical cancer cases.
I feel really bad for these women in developing countries. In my opinion, everyone should have affordable health care, and access to medicines that are needed. Because it is something that the women need, I believe people kind of push it aside as necessary since woman aren’t valued to highly in most developing nations. I think that is sad, and attitudes towards woman need to change. Also, I think that for one second, healthcare companies should stop trying to find ways to make the most money and still succeed, but rather help the most people in a cost effective way.
cited: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/WireStory?id=5674333&page=2
1 comment:
I honestly believe that the "idea" of making cervical cancer screening and vaccines less costly is great. Whether or not it will happen, I am less confident about. Because cervical cancer is not really wide-spreadly known, such as breast cancer or another form, I feel as if it could be looked over in the efforts to make treatment and prevention cheaper. People tend to care more about issues that effect a great population of people in the current, rather than worrying about issues that could potentially effect many in the future.
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