Measles kills 136 as vaccines are shunned in Philippines

MORE than 130 people, mainly children, have died and 8,443 others have fallen ill in the Philippines during a measles outbreak that has been largely blamed on fears about vaccinations.

A total of 136 people, about half of them aged between one and four, have died since the beginning of the year, and health officials say infection rates are still rising, despite a mass immunisation drive that began last week.

In a prescient warning, health chiefs had predicted last year that the southeast Asia nation would be vulnerable to deadly epidemics after a scandal involving a dengue vaccine programme for schoolchildren prompted an “antivax” backlash in the Philippines.

In 2016, the Philippine authorities proceeded with the vaccination of more than 800,000 children, using the new drug Dengvaxia to protect them from the potentially fatal mosquitoborne disease.

However, in 2017, Sanofi, the drug’s French manufacturer, released new data that showed the vaccine increased the risk of long-term hospitalisation in children who had not previously been affected by the virus.

Public trust in vaccines plummeted as a result of the ensuing political controversy, a factor considered to be one of the main reasons for the current measles crisis. The latest health scare has prompted a public information campaign that appears to be overcoming the anti-vax trend, with 130,000 people receiving an inoculation last week. But Francisco Duque, the country’s health minister, has warned that the outbreak may not be under control until the end of April or the start of May.

In January, measles cases rose by more than 1,000 per cent compared with last year’s figures in Manila, which has a population of 12million.