MABALACAT CITY – The Department of Health (DOH) has already administered vaccines to about half of its targeted 11 million children for anti-measles vaccination and another 13 million for anti-polio nationwide since it started its drive two weeks ago.
“Our ambition is to have all children 5 years old and below vaccinated in one month,” Health Sec. Enrique Ona told Punto! during his sorties to an Aeta village in Barangay Calumpang here to oversee vaccination activities. He said that “our target is 100 percent, but realistically I would be happy if we get 95 percent at least.”
Ona said that with lack of records on the vaccination history of children, the only recourse would be to vaccinate all of them against measles and polio, “so that they don’t contaminate each other. He noted that “we have been zero in polio since 2000” but he cited reports of resurgence in Afghanistan as well as “wild polio” in Pakistan and another report from Israel.
In a report during its recent conference on emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases, the DOH regional office said the laboratory-confirmed measles cases this year was “”17,940 percent higher than the same period last year when only one case tested positive in laboratories.”
The age of patients who were tested in the laboratories ranged from one month to 38 years, majority of them 10 years old and below. The report said the victims aged from 3 to 71 years old and that 57.2 percent of them were aged 10 years and below.
It showed that in Aurora province where no measles cases were reported in 2013, 58 cases have been reported so far. Sharp increases in cases were also reported in the other provinces in the region.
So far this year, 1,237 measles cases were reported in Zambales, 1,190 in Bulacan, 855 in Tarlac, 821 in Pampanga, 686 in Nueva Ecija, and 598 in Bataan. Dr. Leilani Mangulabnan, who is in charge of the DOH regional office’s campaign against measles-rubella and polio, blamed low vaccination rate for the surge of measles cases.
“We are not reaching the optimal coverage for vaccination,” she said. But Mangulabnan said that “this September, we want to vaccinate at least a million kids in Central Luzon, including vaccines against polio. We are asking local government units to designate vaccination centers in their areas.”
