Islamabad : Pakistani parents should not let myths about infertility stop them from vaccinating their daughters against HPV, a safe vaccine used in more than 150 countries to prevent cervical cancer, health experts and parliamentarians said on Saturday, urging a community-led campaign to rebuild public trust.
Shaista Parvaiz Malik, Convener of the National Parliamentary Taskforce on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), described HPV vaccination as life-saving, saying she knew its importance because her own sister had died from cervical cancer.
Speaking at a seminar on ‘HPV Vaccination’, she said: "I do not want another woman to die from a completely preventable disease," she said, urging parents to vaccinate their daughters.
She said Pakistan's first HPV vaccination campaign was poorly planned and lacked an effective awareness campaign across mainstream, digital and social media, allowing anti-vaccine groups to spread misinformation. The resulting misconceptions discouraged not only ordinary families but even educated people and doctors from vaccinating their daughters.
She also urged the commercial supplier to keep the vaccine affordable so that girls from low- and middle-income families could also benefit from protection against cervical cancer.
Vice Chancellor of the Health Services Academy Prof. Shahzad Ali Khan dismissed widespread claims linking HPV vaccination with infertility, saying no scientific evidence supported such fears. He noted that more than 150 countries, including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Indonesia, routinely used the vaccine, while Iran manufactured its own HPV vaccine, without any evidence of adverse effects on fertility.
He said Health Minister Syed Mustafa Kamal had vaccinated his own daughter to demonstrate confidence in the vaccine's safety and rejected conspiracy theories portraying HPV vaccination as a foreign agenda. Supported by the World Health Organization, Gavi and endorsed by Pakistani religious scholars, the vaccine should instead be promoted through trusted physicians, teachers, community leaders and imams rather than government spokespeople alone, he said, warning that misinformation on TikTok and WhatsApp required rapid, evidence-based responses in local languages.
Renowned physician and former caretaker health minister of Punjab Prof. Javed Akram said Pakistan's cancer burden was increasing, with more than 120,000 cancer deaths annually. He said HPV had more than 200 variants, about 40 of which could cause cancer, while types 16 and 18 accounted for most cervical cancers.
He urged vaccination of all girls aged 10 to 12 years before exposure to the virus, saying vaccines remained among the safest medical interventions and had saved millions of lives worldwide.
Prof. Syeda Batool Mazhar, President of the Pakistan Menopause Society, said most cervical cancer patients in Pakistan reached hospitals at advanced stages when treatment options were largely limited to palliative care.
