No Polio in the Philippines Since 1993, But Mass Polio Vaccination Program Targeted for 500,000 Typhoon Victims Under Age 5 | Health Impact News
No Polio in the Philippines Since 1993, But Mass Polio Vaccination Program Targeted for 500,000 Typhoon Victims Under Age 5 | Health Impact News
Brian Shilhavy
Health Impact News Editor
In the aftermath of one of the strongest storms to ever strike land, the most dangerous place for children in the Philippines to be right now could very well be the evacuation centers, or living near one.
This past week, the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF began an aggressive program to vaccinate more than 500,000 children with the measles and polio vaccines in the typhoon affected areas of the Philippines. They have already vaccinated more than 30,000 children in Tacolban, one of the worst hit areas.
“It is virtually unprecedented that within two and a half weeks of a disaster of this scale, with this level of devastation and these logistical challenges, that a mass vaccination campaign is already rolling out,” reported Dr. Julie Hall, WHO representative in the Philippines.
The children are being vaccinated for measles and polio, in spite of the fact that measles rates are very low and declining in the Philippines, and that there has not been a single case of polio in the Philippines since 1993.
In the video below, Heather Papowitz, a senior advisor for UNICEF, states that they are vaccinating children for measles even though they have already been vaccinated for the disease, because previous vaccine campaigns were, ”not enough to protect them, so we need to get them vaccinated as soon as possible.”
Is this a statement to the ineffectiveness of measles vaccines that they need to be vaccinated repeatedly, or that somehow typhoon disasters like this require higher doses of the vaccine? By either reasoning, it allows pharmaceutical companies a larger market for their products.
Regarding their goal to vaccinate 500,000 children with the very dangerous oral polio vaccine, she states, “As far as polio, it was already eradicated in the Philippines, so we just want to make sure it doesn’t come back.”
Watch the video for yourself:
