Was it a good mass vaccination campaign or good election campaign strategy?

program manager would have the experience and expertise of running a vaccination initiative. If done right, such would include major components like vaccine ser vices, cold chain logistics, behavior change communication and health promotion, social mobilization and community participation, disease surveillance, and monitoring and evaluation. It is worth noting that the Philippine Children’s Medical Center (PCMC) had none of these competences. The main reason of the selection of the PCMC is directly attributable to the late issuance of the special allotment release order (SARO), an authority to incur ob ligations, and the DoH practice of medical centers to procure items

Second, when one plans for a new, big health project, the pri mary consideration is achieving the “highest chance of success.” If the target individuals were Grade 4 schoolchildren and the vaccina tion sites would be their public schools,“the highest chance of success” would be achieved by conducting the project when the students, teachers and even parents were all around, that is, when there were classes. It would be unreason able to implement vaccination, say, during the summer vacation.

Third, vaccination and health promotion are twin interventions in immunization programs. The most effective prevention in any public health program which targets dis ease reduction is improving health literacy among mothers, families and communities. After all, they are the primary producers of health–not the DoH, nor LGUs and interna tional agencies. Disclosing pertinent information to the mothers and children is particularly mandatory in routine immunization.

Providential ‘bad science’

On another equally important matter, the latest pronouncement of “bad science” in a recent hearing— were receivers of bad advice—seems to me providential. Experts sounded the alarm as early as March 2016. The DoH then did not care to listen. It was full steam ahead. For whatever reason, the DoH found the time and urgency to implement the “mass vaccination campaign” during the 2016 national elections. From the the November 27 announcement providential, I do not know what is.

A career public servant of more than three decades stated under oath, “Health and politics do not mix,” and immediately after, an decades (and is an incumbent sena tor) agreed with the lady.

Core issues

These investigations will continue to pick up until early next year, but so far, there are core issues that

for Filipino families and children. Greed and politics exposed 830,000 healthy children to potential harm and their parents to unnecessary worry that could extend for decades. The only way to allay fear and confu sion is to provide timely and correct information to the victims. This should have been done in the be ginning. Without this information, there should have been no vaccina tion. But there was no full disclosure. No parental consent.

Imperfect science cannot dis is the manufacturer and supplier of Dengvaxia. The DoH is the con tracting party. Even without the “bad science” issue, there were ment and delivery of the new vaccination services. During the December 11, 2017 Senate hearing,

The Department of Justice and the National Bureau of Investigation ( NBI) should investigate DoH fast. There is hope since the pres ent health secretary is not involved giving him advice on this issue are complicit in this Dengvaxia mess. Presently, I have met with two DoH insiders (an assistant secretary and a doctor program manager) who had the courage to come out, tell the truth and show documents of collusion and corruption among undersecretaries (retired, resigned and incumbent), assistant secre directors. I advised the two insiders ent DoH secretary.

• The P3.55 billion Dengvaxia mess is just the tip of the iceberg. A quick, comprehensive, and evi DoJ and NBI will reveal that the