Counteracting vaccine fears

TURNING out to be as important as investigating the failed dengue vaccination program of government is the need to calm parents’fears over any type of immunization of their children.

Health Undersecretary Enrique Domingo said last week that, as an effect of the dengue vaccine controversy, parents were refusing to get their children vaccinated for polio, chicken pox and tetanus. Even the deworming campaign held every January and July to benefit students and children of poor families had a “very low” turnout. Deworming does not entail an injection, just a tablet taken by a child.

It is fear of anything from the Department of Health (DOH) that is making these parents cautious about allowing their children to take a deworming tablet or their immunization shots for preventable diseases.

This anxiety should be countered with assurances from the DOH and the medical industry that their fears are misplaced, that their children’s protection from preventable diseases takes priority over the dengue vaccine dispute, and that the death of 14 children were not found to be directly linked to the vaccine, Dengvaxi a.

It all started when the DOH suspended last December its P3-billion dengue vaccination program after a new analysis showed that the vaccine was more of a risk than a prevention. The conclusion was that Dengvaxia could cause severe dengue fever to those who have not been previously infected with the virus. But the 14 deaths reported could not be directly linked to the vaccine developed by French company Sanofi.

Knowing the far-reaching effect of this development, health officials should have considered that the controversy would raise unfounded fears over other vaccination programs.