And in its statement today, the Catholic diocese also quesitons the vaccine being used. It's called Gardasil 9 and they say, quote, "it does not cover every cancer-causing HPV strain present in our region."
Dr Beer addressed that:
Dr. Natalia Largaespada Beer, Technical Advisor for Maternal and Child Health
"We are not using the Gardasil 9 yet, we are looking towards introducing the Gardasil 9. We are still at the Gardasil 4, and it prevents against 6 different types of cancers: you have throat, anal cancer, penis cancer, and in the female is cervical cancer, vulvar cancer, vaginal cancer. Cancer in the anus, that can occur in the women too and cancer of the throat, that can occur in the women too not only men. So one dose of vaccine is costing us 20BZD and if we were to move to the Gardasil 9 the cost would increase it would cost us 30DBZD. But we have to acknowledge that cervical cancer and these other have related cancers, they can be prevented, with the vaccine you can prevent it with $20. Women that get cervical cancer, advanced stage they have the family has to invest between 40-50k BZD to receive treatment at that stage and maybe they are not even able to save the women's life after that great investment and that is not available to all families."