“In this age of age of fake news and conspiracy theories, the young and innocent are the casualties of war…”
Malnutrition and and lack of access to education are the perennial challenges faced by our younger population.
A proper healthcare during the early stages of childhood is also an equal concern before we can declare children are fit to face adulthood. A proper nutrition and adequate protection mechanism to boost the immune system of a child during his formative years ensure his proper brain development.
Children become adults and with proper education, they will soon joint part of the workforce that fuels the economy.
But the early part of a child’s development is the most crucial part of his formative age. He or she must overcome health obstacles, given his or her vulnerable stage.
He or she must navigate health perils at a young and tender age. Health authorities, thus, must protect their welfare and vulnerability to pathogens that attack their weak immune system.
Health authorities, however, face formidable enemies in their job of immunizing innocent children, To make matters worse, some in the Philippines, more specifically politicians who have myopic eyesights, ignore science.
The measles outbreak of 2019, for instance, caused the deaths of more than 300 people and reached a staggering 23,500 cases. Health authorities naturally attributed the spike to lower vaccination rate caused by the Dengvaxia vaccine scare that resulted in parents’ hesitancy.
This year, 400 people have already been killed by the present outbreak of dengue disease, with more than 200,000 cases reported, up 68 percent from last year’s. Once again, experts blamed the spike in the number of deaths to vaccine distrust.
In this age of age of fake news and conspiracy theories, the young and innocent are the casualties of war, so to speak.
An article published in 2020 quoted Dr. Lulu Bravo, Professor of Pediatric Infectious and Tropical Diseases at the College of Medicine, University of the Philippines Manila, as saying that the anti-vaccine campaign was terribly effective in causing unprecedented mass hysteria.
She notes that following the Dengvaxia fiasco in 2017, mothers were driving away health workers when they came to villages on immunization campaigns and even callied them child killers.
The current dengue outbreak is the result of the negative and massive propaganda drive staged by the henchmen of the Duterte administration to politically demonize the vaccine program implemented by the Department of Health during the time of the late President Benigno Aquino III.
As it turned out, the lies invented by the chief architect of Dengvaxia hysteria, Public Attorney’s Office chief Persida Acosta and her self-proclaimed forensic expert assistant, Dr. Efren Erfe, and their ambitious conspirators, paid vloggers and media friends, were so effective. Until now, people remain steadfast in their hesitance to have their children inoculated because of the sinister propaganda that Dengvaxia was a death-causing “vaccine” as shown by their self-serving data.
Amid the anti-Denvgvaxia conspiracy, small voices of truth are coming out from a few groups of real medical experts but their calls are drowned by the well-financed disinformation campaign. One can only wonder―where could have the money that finance such a massive misinformation campaign come from?
Dengvaxia actually is safe. Acosta and her minions in the media, as well as her conspirators from the leftist cause-oriented groups, had twisted the facts on the report of the “theoretical risk” of Dengvaxia to people who have never contacted the dengue virus before.
They even maliciously invented narratives of 600 deaths caused by Dengvaxia to dupe the public.
We found out later from the report in 2020 that there was not a single case in which Dengvaxia was clinically proven as the cause of death of any these people.
Why do the government and officials of the Department of Health remain silent about the truth that Dengvaxia is safe despite the rising death counts on this new outbreak of dengue?
It is high time, perhaps, for the DOH officials to stage a massive rectification campaign against the anti-Dengvaxia drive and ultimately regain public trust for the government’s vaccination program against dengue.
Or do they, as doctors, expert pathologists and men of science, have reservations too on the reintroduction of Dengvaxia as the only mitigating solution to address the current onslaught of dengue?
The DOH may consider 400 deaths from dengue still low. What then is the death quota for dengue, measles, pertussis and other death-causing pathogens for the government to consider correcting the lies spread by those who are hungry for power and political opportunity?
But first things first. The DOH should hold all the people involved in the malicious anti-Dengvaxia campaign accountable for the deaths of people in the 2019 measles outbreak and in this year’s dengue outbreak. They should be exposed with all their lies and how they made money out from the scare tactic.
Meanwhile, the Regional Trial Court in Quezon City has dismissed all cases against DOH officials in the Dengvaxia issue.
“The prosecution and its supposed star witnesses, Dr. Clarito Cairo, Dr. Tony Leachon, and Dr. Erwin Erfe, could not cite any concrete evidence that came with the hasty accusations. They misrepresented themselves as experts in the trial and their testimonies were declared inadmissible,” rules the court.
In sum, we cannot trust the future of our young children to scaremongers and conspiracy theorists.
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