MANILA – According to a health official on Tuesday, the country’s routine immunization coverage among children is only 62.9 percent, lower than data recorded in previous years.
Department of Health (DOH) officer-in-charge Maria Rosario Vergeire said in a media briefing that the target coverage for routine immunization among children is 95 percent.
Routine vaccines must be administered according to a schedule from the time children are born until they are one year old for them to be effective.
“Kapag kinumpara natin ito sa mga datos natin from the previous years, bumaba po ang ating datos para dito (If we look at our data from the previous years, our data [coverage] for this went down),” she said.
The DOH earlier met with the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to discuss the country’s immunization rate.
“Based on our data, we were able to analyze and ang atin pong pool of susceptibles na mga bata na wala ni isang bakuna o zero dose pa lang sila dito sa ating bansa (our pool of susceptibles who are children with no vaccine, or zero dose in the country) for the past two years of pandemic is almost one million,” Vergeire said.
There are about three million children who were unable to acquire at least one dose of measles vaccine.
As a result, the WHO and UNICEF advised the DOH to boost its routine immunization program because there could be an impending measles outbreak in the country by next year or vaccine-preventable diseases with poor inoculation coverage.
Vergeire noted that aside from vaccine hesitancy, lockdowns and restrictions affected the pediatric vaccination for preventable diseases.
She asked parents to make sure their children get all of the routine immunizations in order to prevent them against illnesses, particularly measles.
“Ang tigdas afflicts less than five years old children. Ang matatanda pwede rin magka-tigdas kung walang bakunang natanggap noong bata pa (Measles afflicts less than five years old children. Adults can also have it if they were not immunized earlier),” she said.
She added that young children with weak immune systems could suffer from complications like pneumonia and diarrhea due to measles which may lead to hospitalization or death.
