Science please, not politics

We can’t really feel good about ourselves; in fact we should be furious over the fact measles and polio and dengue threaten our very young children.

To be adamant about it, our fury is less to do with our sympathies on the helplessness of children but more to do with the damning fact many things could have been done in preventing children from facing bleak fates since all three malignant diseases are preventable.

In recent days, the Department of Health (DoH) has again raised an alarm over contagious diseases, this time on polio. Yet, some of us are still oblivious of the threats and stubbornly go merrily about trying to score political points and often doing it using fake news on vaccines. It is time to stop this foolishness. Indeed, it is pathetic to hear DoH chief Francisco Duque III pleading the case: “We repeat our call to parents and caregivers: Let us prioritize the complete vaccination of our children, so they remain safe from vaccine-preventable diseases, like polio.”

He adds: “We need to make sure that the polio vaccine coverage should be at 95 percent to ensure that this will not create problems to our children.”

Duque’s pleas last week came after the health agency found from a test of Manila’s sewage of the existence of the polio virus which they previously thought they had licked.

We hope Duque’s pleas are heard often and are taken seriously. People shouldn’t really wait for a serious outbreak of polio before having kids vaccinated much as it had happened earlier this year when measles struck.

Polio and measles are both highly contagious diseases, with measles often called the most contagious disease on earth. But these two diseases can be combatted and are in fact preventable if only Filipinos had more trust in the vaccines against them.

And this bring into stark relief that for the DoH, in common with public health professionals all over the world, the real issue isn’t so much about fighting viruses but about people hesitating and refusing vaccines for their children.

Tragically for us, the hesitancy and the refusal are largely attributed to the Dengvaxia controversy. The DoH itself acknowledges the country’s immunization rate against measles dropped to just 40 percent early this year following the public’s fear surrounding the use of the anti-dengue vaccine Dengvaxia.

Misgivings about vaccines, as is pretty much known by now, was complicated further when the Public Attorney’s Office insisted Dengvaxia caused the deaths of children in spite of what doctors say.

Abetted by phony expertise of scores of irresponsible social media users which in turn spurned word of mouth with devastating consequences on a confused public, the Dengvaxia controversy had also turned into a diseased politics made more cancerous by partisan emotions rather than cured by science.

Dengue is still very much around and hospitals are still filled to the brim with dengue patients. But many are waking up to the medical fact that while Dengvaxia is usually not for those who get dengue the first time, it does work as a vaccine for those who already had dengue and survived it.

At any rate, the Dengvaxia controversy did do damage. So much so that when life-threatening and highly contagious measles came around, public health officials had to declare a crisis.

A crisis which should not have been as measles has a potent and effective vaccine. The vaccine is crucially important since medical experts say if a person with measles walks into a room, the virus can linger in the room for two hours after the person has left.

To be graphic about it, let us say you happen to be a social media troll daily dishing out fake news and your parents did not take the time to vaccinate you with measles. Imagine what happens when a fellow troll walks into the room you’re working in and he or she happens to have measles.

If you aren’t dead from the measles scourge and manage to survive, medical experts further say measles can sometime suppress the body’s immune system as well as cause loss of hearing for years.

Anyway, in our country this year, measles took a heavy toll on babies and toddlers, with measles cases tripling and the number of deaths quadrupling in the first seven months of the year.

The country, according to the World Health Organization, ranked third worldwide with the highest number of measles cases.

A news report quoting records from the DoH shows that some 80 percent of the deaths due to measles in the country during the first half of the year were children aged 1 to 4 and infants below nine months. Hardest hit were the provinces of Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal and Quezon.

Not only were there so many hospital confinements and deaths, the outbreak nearly threatened to wind back decades of success of containing the disease since the first measles vaccines were introduced.

Fortunately, the measles outbreak was somehow contained, with Duque saying in April the spread of measles was “under control.” Nonetheless, he refused to lift the declaration of an outbreak to prevent the public from taking things easy. There is still a measles outbreak up to now.

So, now that polio has been added to the deadly mix of measles and dengue, what is then the necessary first step?

If we are to go by what happens with Dengvaxia, it is really about paying attention to what medical practitioners and science say. We really should inform ourselves properly and to responsibly correct the misinformed — this is no time for believing in quacks and to share on social media viral idiocies.

“In our country this year, measles took a heavy toll on babies and toddlers, with measles cases tripling and the number of deaths quadrupling in the first seven months of the year.

“People shouldn’t really wait for a serious outbreak of polio before having kids vaccinated much as it had happened earlier this year when measles struck.