HPV VIRUS AWARENESS CAMPAIGN
PROTECTING OUR CHILDREN’S HEALTH
The Association of Cancer Patients of Athens (K.E.F.I.), and “Erifyle” group in their effort to increase awareness regarding the HPV virus, is organizing a campaign seeking to inform parents about the necessity of HPV vaccination to girls and boys.
The campaign was launched on Wednesday 29 January 2020 by a seminar with the support of health care professionals, who discussed the importance of vaccination for pre-adolescent boys and girls, as well as the types of cancers resulting from human papillomavirus (HPV).
It is our duty to protect our children; it is our duty to be aware and to promote preventive care!
Purpose:
- to inform the public, and especially parents and the school community, regarding the HPV virus and the best practices of protection and treatment. Data was collected from countries where the HPV prevalence has been eliminated.
Goal:
- to make the vaccination a standard practice for girls and boys, looking forward to healthy women and men.
Speakers:
- Haidopoulos Dimitrios, Assistant Professor of Gynecological Oncology
- Athanasiadis Elias, Assistant Professor of Oncology at North Western University, USA.
Topics:
- the link between stress and viral infections, the sources of stress and the aggravating factors that enhance inflammation, the various stress-induced diseases, one of which is HPV infection which can lead to cervical cancer, among others.
- HPV test, an innovation in medical examinations that is considered highly reliable for early diagnosis of the virus in the body and has many advantages over simple annual testing with a PAP smear.
- all cancer types caused by HPV and the methods used in foreign countries to limit its spread.
- characteristics of human papillomavirus (HPV), the statistics on virus infection by sex and age, the way vaccines are produced and stressed that modern vaccines do not carry a real pathogen.
- cervical cancer and the risk factors associated with it, the stages of the disease, the importance of early diagnosis and the ways of treating it by stage of diagnosis.
- experience of our member Kiki with cervical cancer who noted that she wouldn’t be here talking to us if she had the opportunity to be vaccinated in young age.
This seminar was the kick-off action of our campaign and similar events will follow in different municipalities firstly around Athens and later all over Greece.