The Cervical Cancer Vaccine Cookie Jar
Photo owned by Nathan Borror (cc)
Redmum has started a campaign to highlight the disgusting decision to cut the cervical cancer vaccination scheme. This scheme was supposed to administer a vaccine to 12 year old girls.
Let’s show her all the young girls who are being denied this vaccine that could prevent some of them getting cervical cancer in later life. This decision has nothing to do with the screening programme that should be done anyway and nothing anyone can say can make me feel any differently.
To join, send a picture of your daughter to Harney’s office. Redmum has the details:
If you feel strongly about this please email Harney, here’s her email minister’s_office@health.irlgov.ie – I will be emailing her and I am urging all my friends with daughters to do the same. Please do it too and please ask your friends to also take part. The cost of this is nothing, nothing compared to saving someone from cervical cancer in the future.
The Government are quick to respond to criticism touting Cervical Check as an effective measure to catch cancer early. The need for cervical screening in later life could be drastically reduced if girls are vaccinated now. Today. Hello, progressive thinkers?!!
Funny how Harney et al managed to announce this cut while the whole world was watching Election 08, right? Who got caught with their paws in the cookie jar?
Edit: And via Dave, the Ray D’Arcy show have made it easy to protest, creating a page with a form that you can fill out.
Edit 2: Having problems with the above mail address? Why not CC info@health.gov.ie?
If your health has changed recently or if you’ve had ovarian pains or you just plain suspect something is wrong, please see your doctor. Self-diagnosis on the web won’t help.
Hi Alexia,
Ray Darcy did a thing about this on the radio this morning too. There’s a form email on his page (through todayfm.com) that can be sent to Mary’s email address.
Dave
I was diagnosed with 3b cervical cancer at age 28! I was diagnosed while I was in my second year of law school. So to those parents, politicians and others that think HPV and Cervical Cancer can’t happen to them because they are too young, too education, too wealthy-YOU ARE WRONG.
Here is my story:
Meaghan was a young, healthy vibrant 28 year old attending law school in the winter of 2006. During her second year of classes she began feeling ill. She went to numerous doctors looking for help. Each doctor suggested it was all in Meaghan’s head; maybe she was depressed, mentally ill or over-stressed. Because she was young and had always been healthy the doctors assumed nothing could be seriously wrong. Enduring extreme pain, bleeding and exhaustion Meaghan kept returning to her doctors looking for help. Still no one did anything to address any of her health issues. Meaghan’s symptoms became worse with each passing day. Because no one believed she was ill she continued to attend classes and tried to live a normal life. Eventually the pain became so unbearable she drove herself to the ER.
The doctors at the Emergency Room also suggested Meaghan’s pain was in her head. However, due to the symptoms she complained of they were required to give her a CT scan. The CT scan showed Meaghan’s pain was NOT in her head. She had a large tumor on her cervix. The tumor had grown so large it had crushed her ureters causing her kidneys to rip open. In February 2007 Meaghan was finally diagnosed with advanced cervical cancer, stage 3b. The same doctors that had assured her she was fine were now telling her and her family that she would not survive.
Meaghan decided not to give up but rather to fight. After two weeks of hospitalization and blood transfusions Meaghan was flown to Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston Massachusetts. Upon arrival the doctors were both amazed and horrified. Amazed at this young woman’s spirit and horrified at the pain she was forced to endure. Teams of doctors attended Meaghan in an effort to diminish her pain and save her life. Meaghan underwent chemo, internal and external radiation as well as numerous surgeries. With only a 20% chance of surviving Meaghan and her doctors fought hard against cancer. In July 2007 she won her battle and was cancer free.
Although she won her fight Meaghan continues to struggle against the secondary effects of her treatments. Cancer has changed her life forever. Meaghan returned to law school and is set to graduate in December 2008.
Without the love, care and attention Meaghan received at Dana Farber Cancer Institute she would not have survived. Because of this Meaghan has dedicated herself to raising awareness and supporting Cancer Institutes. To learn more about Meaghan and her story visit her blog at http://www.cancerlost.blogspot.com
I dunno, I’ve read a lot of nasty stuff about Gardasil. For instance -
“The long-term consequences of Gardasil are not known. The manufacturer admits this and agrees it does not know its effect on young girls’ cancer risk, on their immunity system, on their reproductive system, or its genetic effects. In due course, we will know this, possibly in twenty or thirty years from now when these young girls, the innocent subjects of the Gardasil experiment have become grown women and then report the consequences of their having taken the medication in their childhood on medical advice.”
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/dec/07121905.html
Shouldn’t there be more discussion about the vaccine before people start piling on the government?
Read some nasty stuff about Cervical Cancer! Ive lived it and its probably horrible!
Mary Harney was just on The Last Word on Today FM and it’s been cancelled simply because she’s no money for it. She needs €16m to start rolling it out in September and a rolling budget thereafter. She doesn’t want to start rolling out a service that can’t continue otherwise it’s simply not effective. The government were so blind and convinced that things wouldn’t get so bad that they really didn’t see this coming and that’s how this vaccination scheme got the initial green light. Money that’s in the HSE budget for cancer services is going into screening and treatment as they’re ongoing. I feel there’s little point in mounting a campaign on it as the money simply isn’t there and it’s the same for many many other things. It was primary schools last week, it will be something else next week. Just another nail in the coffin.
@Meaghan I am so sorry to hear about your experiences, but I am delighted that you are now cancer free. It is ridiculous that you were not taken seriously.
@Steph sorry I don’t agree, so harney says there is no money for it and we just lie down and take it. Nope, the money for this could be found, if there was a will. It is shortsighted and Harney talking about the screening process, which hasn’t started yet, as the catch all and saviour of the day is nonsense. What about trying to catch it before hand?
@Lexia thanks for blogging this, deeply appreciated.
Hi! (from another Steph)
Well done to everyone who’s highlighted this latest scandal from the Harney camp and especially to Red Mum who kick-started the campaign.
And in response to the other Steph…
What price do you put on our daughters lives? Harney has truly lost the run of herself when she puts balancing the coffers ahead of people’s lives. As far as I know, cervical cancer is the only cancer that has a preventative vaccine available and yet our government is turning down this opportunity???
Meaghan’s brave story above is testament to the importance of giving every girl the best chance possible to avoid the horrors of cervical cancer.
I despair over Harney. And the sad thing is, I don’t think we’ve heard the half of it yet.
Hi Alexia,
Are you absolutely sure that’s the correct email address? It’s never nice to see extra characters in an email address and having a quote in there is a whole other set of problems.
In the email address shown above from Redmum, the quote in the address is ACUTE ACCENT or Hex 0×92 instead of what I’d expect which is Hex 0×27 APOSTROPHE/quotesingle.
Just pointing this out because perhaps the mail server may not translate correctly between them and have all the mail for the minister silently dropped.
I realise my comments read like I support Harney in this but I don’t – she & the HSE handled the entire thing extremely badly. I was citing what she had said while adding my own (admittedly) defeatist comments. She (claimed) that when she originally announced the proposed introduction of the vaccination programme that it was only to be introduced provided funding was approved, instead of waiting to announce it if and when it was approved. Many people were understandably led to believe that there was no question of funding or waiting for approval of funding.
In my opinion the HSE is a shambles, not to mind the rest of the civil service. Yes there is money out there – something like €260m will be paid out in public service pay increases next year, about half that going into the HSE alone. But we sure won’t be hearing of any public sector pay freeze or even a cut in this increase, oh no, they’d be on strike quicker than you can say “bench-marking brilliance”.
It’s not in my nature to be so defeatist about anything but I have little faith in the government & opposition when it comes to digging us out of the economic mess. I’m sending my words of opposition along with some of possible solution to the email address provided above. I sincerely hope the campaign is successful but unfortunately I won’t be holding my breath. Apparently the vaccine is available from GPs on request – you just have to foot the bill of between €300 & €600. That 1% income levy would have helped cover mine. Cheers Lenihan.
Just following up Michael’s comment, I’ve checked with the Department of Health & Children’s site and the web form on the Today FM site and they both point to this address: minister%27s_office@health.irlgov.ie. Has anyone’s emails bounced? Might be no harm CC-ing info@health.gov.ie in case the emails are disappearing into a non-existant mailbox.
@Micheal:
I copied the address in the original post. So unless it’s a kink in my way of copying and pasting… Possible though! Recopied it now, hoping the kinks have been worked out. Perhaps adding an apostrophe in an email address to confuse was on purpose? :O
@Steph:
Thanks for the secondary email address. Will amend post.
@Alexia The problem is on RedMums site. Recopying won’t help. Actually typing an apostrophe will work. I guess RedMum wrote her post in a GUI tool such as a word processor which automatically did fancy formatting (Word does this too).
@Steph and @Alexia: It’s not the issue with a quote being used in the email address, it’s the problem that there are multiple [different!] characters that all look very similar and the one in the email address above is a fancy formatting quote that *looks* nearly identical an apostrophe character but is infact different to the computer.
@Micheal: I still think it’s a cunning ploy to occasionally bounce our mails. I wonder what Brainiac thought this was a good mail addy format?
I wondered was the email muck-up on purpose perhaps? Or am I now an awful cynic altogether?