Who shapes the agenda? The illegal vaccination of young women in India; not a new story

BY SIMONE J. SMITH

Imagine if you will, being told that a group of people were coming into your neighbourhood to give you and your friends a medicine that was going to make things better for you. There are a lot of things that you need in your neighbourhood: access to clean water, sanitation services, good food, but instead, these people are telling you that the shot of medicine they are going to give you will save your life, and the life of your friends.

You are ten years old, and the other young ladies are about your age as well. You find out that you have to get three doses, so you do. You don’t feel very well after getting the series of shots, and you hear about other girls who received it who have died. What happened you wonder, as your health slowly deteriorates?

The story that I just retold is one that occurred in 2009, to a group of tribal children in Khammam district in Telangana, India. The district became a site for observation studies on cervical cancer vaccines. They were administered to thousands of girls aged nine to fifteen.

The girls were given the Human Papillomavirus vaccine in three rounds that year under the supervision of state health department officials. Yes, the government was standing behind this initiative, very similar to how many world governments are standing behind the COVID-19 vaccine, but I digress.

The vaccine used was Gardasil, manufactured by Merck. It was given to around 16,000 girls in the district, many of whom stayed in state government-run hostels meant for tribal students.

It was not too long after, maybe a few months later, many of the girls who received the round of shots started falling ill, and by 2010 five of them died. This was not the only place that it was done. An estimated 14,000 children studying in schools meant for tribal children inVadodara, Gujarat were also vaccinated with another brand of HPV vaccine, Cervarix, manufactured by GSK. Not too long after shots were administered in this district, two more deaths were reported.

Now the question you might be asking, who is responsible for what was done. Oh shoot! I forgot to mention something. It is important to know that these shots were given without parental permission. Let that sink in and let us get back to the question at hand. Who is responsible for such irresponsible behaviour?

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) is a founding partner of the GAVI Alliance. Some of the pharmaceutical companies that create these vaccines have affiliation with BMGF. For instance, BMGF has $0.12 billion shares in Sanofi-Aventis, which owns Shantha Biotech, a vaccine manufacturer in Hyderabad. BMGF also has links with Merck, another vaccine manufacturer.

There have been questions about the Gates Foundation’s ties with pharmaceutical companies and the possible influence this may have on the country’s vaccination strategy. Global Policy Forum, an independent policy watchdog that seeks to promote accountability in international organisations, raised some of these concerns in a study in December 2015.

The biggest concern was the conflict of interest issues that were noted by a steering group of the National Health Mission. In the study, “Philanthropic Power and Development – Who shapes the agenda,” it was cautioned that there was a growing influence of the larger global philanthropic foundations around the world. What were they doing with this influence, and how was it serving the global community?

In 2017, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Indian immunization program ceased, but not after bringing harm to thousands of young women.

This is the same man that our governments have given over their power too. This is the same man who said, “The world today has 6.8 billion people.  That’s headed up to about nine billion. Now, if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by, perhaps, 10% or 15%. But there, we see an increase of about 1.3.”

According to Reuters fact check on this quote Gates was not suggesting the global population should be killed off using vaccines, he was instead saying that improving public health using vaccinations can reduce unsustainable population growth in the future – and with it, lower carbon emissions.

I wonder what those young women in India feel about that? A better question is how do you feel about it? This is definitely not a new story, but it is one to think about.