Attempt to strike out worried mother’s HPV vaccine action
A MOTHER who has taken a High Court case over a cervical cancer vaccine given to schoolgirls faces a legal move to have it struck out.
Fiona Kirby, a nurse from Kilbeggan, Co. Westmeath, is hoping to secure a court order requiring the Health Products Regulatory Authority to withdraw the HPV vaccine Gardasil.
The vaccine protects girls against four strains of the human papillomavirus, which can lead to cervical cancer.
It has been administered to girls who are attending the first year
Extremely fatigued
and nauseous
of secondary school since 2010 under a national immunisation programme.
So far more than 200,000 have been vaccinated against HPV.
But concerned mother Ms Kirby claims her daughter suffered ‘horrendous’ adverse consequences after being given the jab.
But at a brief hearing yesterday, lawyers for the HPRA asked the court to fix March 15 to hear its application to have the case dismissed.
The HPRA has denied the claims and says it is not the proper defendant in the case.
And the authority has told the court that the European Commission is the only authority with the power to revoke Gardasil’s EU marketing authorisation.
It also said that on January 12, the European Commission had taken a final and binding decision, following a review of HPV vaccines, to maintain Gardasil’s marketing authorisation.
The vaccine, known by its trade name Gardasil, has been offered to schoolgirls since May 2010. A campaign group called REGRET (Reaction and Effects of Gardasil Resulting in Extreme Trauma) is supporting Ms Kirby’s action.
A member of this group, Catherine Weitbrecht, from Co. Donegal, told the court that they were taking legal and medical advice, and that they hope to bring a report from a US-based neurologist when the case comes to hearing.
Judge Tony O’Connor adjourned the case to Tuesday, March 15.
Members of the group protested outside the High Court, carrying banners which declared, ‘ HPV. Injected and Neglected by the HSE’, as well as placards listing the alleged side-effects of the injection, such as chronic headaches and muscle pain.
In December of last year, the High Court refused to grant an injunction to Ms Kirby to have the vaccine withdrawn pending further investigation. On that occasion, she alleged that the side- effects had caused severe suffering for more than 100 young girls between the ages of 11 and 16, who had been administered it in their school.
Ms Kirby claimed that within 24 hours of receiving the vaccine in October 2011, her 11- year- old daughter presented with severe flu-like symptoms.
The symptoms reappeared after the child got her second vaccine shot, as a result of which her mother did not allow her get a third shot, she said.
Her daughter became extremely fatigued, suffered severe nausea which led to weight loss and muscle wastage, she said.
She also missed days at school and in March 2012 was hospitalised with bilateral pneumonia and was on antibiotics for six weeks, Ms Kirby said.