Yating's poster proposal has been accepted for presentation at the 2022 annual meeting of the American Association for the History of Medicine in Saratoga Springs, April 21-24, 2022.
Here is the abstract:
Since the Italian government first introduced the HPV vaccine to the public in 2006, the HPV vaccination swept numerous countries, including China. WHO called for the elimination of cervical cancer caused by the HPV virus in 2018. In response, the Chinese government approved the imported nine-valent HPV vaccine. Based on the analysis of official documents, online discussions, and interview transcripts, I argue that a race for the HPV vaccines began in China in 2018. Due to the widespread media propaganda that suggests the HPV vaccine saves girls, most young Chinese women are afraid of being left behind, especially when there is a maximum age for the vaccination. The insufficient supply of vaccines urged women under or about to turn 26 to scramble to get nine-valent HPV vaccines through legal and illegal means. Costing over four thousand yuan, the three shots have become a new certification of hygienic citizenship. Women as an agency, along with the discourse of fear and anxiety, embodied the Chinese governance on women’s sexual health as a part of the global HPV program. To ease the imbalance between supply and demand and change the dominant role of the Western HPV vaccine in the market, the Chinese government recently accelerated the development of domestic HPV vaccines and implemented the policy of free domestic vaccines for girls under 15 years old. However, numerous girls still pursue imported vaccines, officially propagandized as unnecessary in China. These “vaccine nationalism” policies represent the Chinese government’s defense on the authority of disease, health, and women’s bodies when the imported vaccines are more competitive in the market. The race, existing at both individual and national levels, implies the agency frame of women in the global HPV vaccination campaign and the Chinese government’s efforts to govern the disease as it competes with foreign medicines.
