The Consumers’ Foundation yesterday urged the government to launch an investigation into potential risks of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, which the foundation said have led to several cases of severe side effects and even death overseas.
“The Health Promotion Administration and some local governments offer free HPV vaccines to female junior-high school students, but a large number of side effects following HPV vaccinations have been reported in the US, Japan and the UK, which have had 8,000, 1,926 and 1,340 cases respectively,” the foundation said.
It said that Taiwan Immunization Vision and Strategy recommends that teenage girls get vaccinated when they are 13 to achieve maximum protection, and it predicts that the efficacy of the three-dose regime — which costs about NT$4,000 per dose — could last for as long as two decades.
However, the foundation cited statistics showing that 1,926 out of 3.42 million Japanese who completed the vaccination since the Japanese government promoted a government-funded HPV vaccination program in December 2012 had suffered from side effects.
“Among them, 101 experienced severe side effects and one died,” the foundation said, adding that the Japanese government has initiated an investigation into the incidents.
In the UK, while most of the HPV vaccine recipients exhibited only mild symptoms following the injections, such as fever, nausea, dizziness and muscle weakness, there are reports that 20 young women experienced blurred vision, four suffered from spasms, one developed facial paralysis and one suffered paralysis on the right side of her body, the foundation said.
US authorities are yet to rule out the HPV vaccination as being responsible for the deaths of 10 young girls, it added.
In response, HPA Cancer Prevention and Control Division Director Wu Chien-yuan (吳建遠) said hospitals and clinics have been instructed to inform vaccine recipients of all the potential side effects from the HPV vaccine, adding that only 100 of the more-than 16,000 Taiwanese who have been vaccinated so far had reported side effects.
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