KARACHI: Pakistan has vaccinated about 9 million adolescent girls against the virus that causes cervical cancer, as part of a continuing national campaign that has overcome early setbacks fueled by skeptics online, the health minister said Friday. Health Minister Mustafa Kamal said the campaign that began Sept. 15 is aiming to vaccinate 13 million girls aged 9 to 14 against the human papillomavirus, or HPV, which causes most cervical cancers. He said the program so far achieved 70% of its goal. The program has overcome what Kamal said were baseless rumors spread by some parents that the vaccine could cause infertility. He gave the vaccine to his own daughter live on stage at an event in Karachi this week to build confidence. &ldquo;By the grace of God, administering the vaccine to my daughter publicly had a huge impact,&rdquo; Kamal told The Associated Press. &ldquo;From the fifth day of the campaign, refusal rates began dropping and acceptance climbed to 70&ndash;80% in some districts.&rdquo; However, many parents are still reluctant. &ldquo;I have heard that the vaccination is being used to make women infertile and reduce the population of Muslims,&rdquo; said Ali Sheikh, a mother of two in Karachi, the capital of Sindh province. She said that &ldquo;social media is full of such claims,&rdquo; and that she was advised by relatives not to allow health workers to vaccinate her daughters. Health worker Shamim Anwar, 52, said the job of administering the vaccines has been exhausting. &ldquo;It is very difficult work. Many parents refuse because of rumors and hesitate to let us vaccinate their daughters,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Sometimes we even face humiliation, but we tolerate it because we have to complete the vaccination target,&rdquo; she said, as she went door-to-door for the campaign in Karachi. Cervical cancer is the third most common cancer among Pakistani women after breast and ovarian cancers. Globally, it is the fourth most common. Each year, between 18,000 and 20,000 women in Pakistan die of the disease, according to health authorities. Experts promoted the campaign under the slogan &ldquo;one jab will do the job.&rdquo; Authorities set up vaccination centers and deployed teams to schools nationwide to reach as many girls as possible. Kamal acknowledged that during the first days of the drive, refusals outnumbered acceptances, fueled by false claims that the vaccine campaign is a Western plot to cause infertility. Officials say the vaccine, offered free of charge, typically causes only minor side effects. The 13 million girls targeted in the initial campaign were in Punjab and Sindh provinces and in Pakistan-held Kashmir. The country plans to expand the coverage to additional areas by 2027, hoping to eliminate cervical cancer as a public health problem by 2030. It became the 149th country to add the HPV vaccine to its immunization schedule.

Health

Pakistan has vaccinated 9 million girls against HPV in a national campaign aiming for 13 million. Despite rumors linking the vaccine to infertility, uptake rose after Health Minister Mustafa Kamal publicly vaccinated his daughter to build confidence.

Pakistan vaccinates 9 million girls against cervical cancer despite online backlash

NEW YORK: Infection rates from drug-resistant &ldquo;nightmare bacteria&rdquo; rose almost 70% between 2019 and 2023, according to a new report from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scientists. Bacteria that are difficult to treat due to the so-called NDM gene primarily drove the increase, CDC researchers wrote in an article published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Only two antibiotics work against those infections, and the drugs are expensive and must be administered through an IV, researchers said. Bacteria with the gene were once considered exotic, linked to a small number of patients who received medical care overseas. Though the numbers are still small, the rate of US cases jumped more than fivefold in recent years, the researchers reported. &ldquo;The rise of NDMs in the US is a grave danger and very worrisome,&rdquo; said David Weiss, an Emory University infectious diseases researcher, in an email. It&#39;s likely many people are unrecognized carriers of the drug-resistant bacteria, which could lead to community spread, the CDC scientists said. That may play out in doctors&rsquo; offices across the country, as infections long considered routine &mdash; like urinary tract infections &mdash; could become harder to treat, said Dr. Maroya Walters, one of the report&rsquo;s authors. Antimicrobial resistance occurs when germs such as bacteria and fungi gain the power to fight off the drugs designed to kill them. The misuse of antibiotics was a big reason for the rise &mdash; unfinished or unnecessary prescriptions that didn&rsquo;t kill the germs made them stronger. In recent years, the CDC has drawn attention to &ldquo; nightmare bacteria &rdquo; resistant to a wide range of antibiotics. That includes carbapenems, a class of antibiotics considered a last resort for treatment of serious infections. Researchers drew data from 29 states that do the necessary testing and reporting of carbapenem-resistant bacteria. They counted 4,341 cases of carbapenem-resistant bacterial infections from those states in 2023, with 1,831 of them the NDM variety. The researchers did not say how many of the infected people died. The rate of carbapenem-resistant infections rose from just under 2 per 100,000 people in 2019 to more than 3 per 100,000 in 2023 &mdash; an increase of 69%. But the rate of NDM cases rose from around 0.25 to about 1.35 &mdash; an increase of 460%, the authors said. A researcher not involved in the study said the increase is probably related to the COVID-19 pandemic. &ldquo;We know that there was a huge surge in antibiotic use during the pandemic, so this likely is reflected in increasing drug resistance,&rdquo; said Dr. Jason Burnham, a Washington University researcher, in an email. The CDC&rsquo;s count is only a partial picture. Many states are not fully testing and reporting cases. Even in states that do, cases tend to be among hospital patients sick enough to warrant special testing. Many hospitals also aren&rsquo;t able to do the testing needed to detect certain forms of genetic resistance. The CDC researchers did not have data from some of the most populous states, including California, Florida, New York and Texas, which means the absolute number of US infections &ldquo;is definitely underestimated,&rdquo; Burnham said. This is not the first study to report a rise. A CDC report published in June noted an increase in NDM cases in New York City between 2019 and 2024.

Americas

CDC researchers report U.S. infections from drug-resistant “nightmare bacteria” surged nearly 70% since 2019, driven by NDM gene strains. Limited treatment options, antibiotic misuse, and underreported cases raise fears of harder-to-treat common infections nationwide.

Articles tagged with "Health"

Pakistan vaccinates 9 million girls against cervical cancer despite online backlash

'Nightmare bacteria' cases are increasing in the US