The World Health Organization (WHO) Western Pacific Region expressed alarm on Friday as the number of unvaccinated children in the region reached one million.
“The Philippines is among the top five countries for zero-dose children. So we have to ramp up routine vaccination plus do outreach campaigns,” said Dr. Rajendra Yadav, WHO’s officer for disease control.
Data from the Department of Health revealed that more than two million children have not received their pentavalent vaccines from 2020 to 2023— the period of health emergency around the world. As of 2023, there were also 1.4 million children who needed to catch up on their immunization.
The DOH agreed with the WHO on the need to respond faster to routine and catch-up immunization and prevent the spread of even more vaccine-preventable diseases.
But Health Assistant Secretary Albert Domingo said the pandemic was not the sole reason behind the rising number of unvaccinated children.
“If you look at it, there will be supply side issues, vaccine delivery and demand. There was also hesitancy due to misinformation. We saw this during the time of COVID,” he said in an ABS-CBN report.
Vaccines are among the first things that children should receive at birth to prevent falling ill from various diseases.
Vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles and pertussis are once again making their presence felt particularly in the Philippines and have forced some local governments to declare localized outbreaks.
Domingo said parents needed to have their children vaccinated especially against measles, an outbreak of which was recently declared in the Bangsamoro region.
WHO country representative Dr. Rui Paulo de Jesus said following their coordination with the DOH, the Bangsamoro Ministry of Health, and local officials, over 4,500 vaccinators were deployed to the region.
As of April 4, around 232,000 out of 1.3 million children aged 6 months to 10 years have been vaccinated.