Immigrant vaccine mandate criticized

New female immigrants are required to receive the cervical-cancer vaccine.

Los Angeles Times

A cervical cancer vaccine that has been recommended only for U.S. residents has become a requirement for all new female immigrants ages 11 to 26, sparking an outcry over the order’s safety and cost.

“It’s outrageous,” said Sara Sadhwani, project director for the Asian Pacific American Legal Center in Los Angeles. “It seems absolutely premature to mandate this for immigrant women.”

The new requirement went into effect Aug. 1 and will affect more than 130,000 immigrants a year.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration in June 2006 approved the vaccine Gardasil for females age 9 to 26 to block strains of the human papillomavirus, or HPV, a sexually transmitted virus that can cause cervical cancer. About 4,000 women in the U.S. die of the disease each year.

The national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended the vaccine for 11- and 12-year-old girls, with catch-up shots up to age 26. (The vaccine works best if given early, before a young woman is sexually active and already might have contracted the virus.)

Unknown to many immigrant and health advocates, a 1996 immigration law directs the Citizenship and Immigration Services to require that new immigrants receive any inoculation recommended for U.S. residents by the CDC’s immunization committee.

“It’s not really a decision of ours,” immigration service spokeswoman Sharon Rummery said. “We can’t cherry-pick the recommendations of the committee.”

To help protect the health of U.S. residents, foreigners applying for permanent residency are required to undergo medical exams and receive vaccines against such highly contagious diseases as measles, meningitis and polio.

CDC spokesman Curtis Allen added that his agency’s immunization committee, a panel of physicians that advises the CDC, did not consider the immigration implications of its recommendation.

“They made the recommendation based on the effectiveness and importance of the vaccine,” he said. “That’s their charge, and not immigration.”

The CDC, Allen said, stands by its recommendation.

Although most medical organizations echo the CDC’s advice that Gardasil be part of routine vaccinations, it has not been universally embraced. About a quarter of U.S. teens — roughly 2.5 million girls —received at least one of the three-shot series in the vaccine’s first full year of distribution, according to the CDC. The goal is 90 percent. So far only Virginia has made Gardasil mandatory.

There have been some concerns about the vaccine’s potential side effects. As of June 30, the FDA had received 9,749 “adverse events” reports from physicians and patients after Gardasil injections. Most involved pain at the injection site, headaches, nausea, fainting or fever.

The 6 percent that were deemed serious included 20 deaths as well as blood clots and several cases of Guillain-Barr syndrome, an autoimmune disease that can lead to paralysis. According to the FDA, there is no evidence that Gardasil caused the deaths or led to Guillain-Barr .

Still, some physicians believe that the vaccine’s safety has not been adequately proved.