Measles outbreak widens, DoH steps up monitoring
OFFICIALS ON Wednesday acknowledged the rise in vaccine hesitancy amid a widening measles outbreak in Luzon and parts of the Visayas, as the Department of Health (DoH) assured strict monitoring on the situation.
“With the defaulters adding through the years, tapos biglang nadagdagan nitong (then suddenly there has been a spike in [measles] cases this) 2018, I think it set up the setting of what we’re having now and the Department of Health will be concentrating this 2019 to improve our immunization rates,” Undersecretary Rolando Enrique D. Domingo said in a press conference on Thursday led by Health Secretary Francisco T. Duque III .
Mr. Duque for his part said, “(T)here will be a little bit of tweaking in terms of a new approach that we will be adopting. Mas magkakaroon ng houseto-house o susuriin natin ang unvaccinated population.” (There will be a more [vigilant] house-to-house [campaign], or we will monitor the unvaccinated population).
Mr. Duque acknowledged the outbreak but qualified that “(a)n outbreak means it’s a rise in cases but this is not an epidemic.”
For his part, Interior Secretary Eduardo M. Año told reporters on Thursday, “Kagabi pinag-usapan ‘yan sa Cabinet at ang reason kung bakit nagkaroon ng measles outbreak (is) because of the issue on Dengvaxia. Natakot magpaimmune ‘yung mga magulang para sa mga anak nila. So ang nangyari ngayon, way below ‘yung ating statistics sa immunization compared to previous years. Bumababa naman sa 20 percent.” (It was discussed last night by the Cabinet that the reason why there was a measles outbreak is because of the issue on Dengvaxia. Parents became reluctant to have their children immunized. So what happened was, the statistics on immunization is way below compared to previous years. It went down 20 percent).
In a statement on Jan. 31, Mr. Duque III said the DoH reached out to various agencies including the Public Attorney’s Office (PAO) in connection with resolving the Dengvaxia cases. But PAO chief Persida V. Rueda-Acosta “refuse(d) to cooperate and continue(d) to attack and throw baseless claims accusations at the Department of Health and myself,” Mr. Duque said.
“As a consequence, we saw a decline in vaccine confidence and a rise in cases of measles and other vaccine-preventable disease,” he said.
Data provided by the Epidemiology Bureau of the DoH showed measles cases rising to as much as a hundredfold in at least four regions in Luzon, including the National Capital Region (NCR) which registered 441 cases as of Jan. 26 this year, as opposed to 36 in a 2018 tally.