MANILA (Reuters) – According to a rumor circulating in the Philippines, the coronavirus vaccine will allow President Rodrigo Duterte to kill people at the push of a button.
Elsewhere in the country, with 108 million people, memories of a locally banned dengue vaccine make people give up the idea of getting vaccinated even before the campaign begins.
“Many children became ill after receiving this vaccine,” Crisanta Alipio, 62, said of the ill-fated dengue vaccine, a mosquito-borne disease that can be deadly.
He said he was afraid of the new coronavirus, but was even more afraid of vaccination.
The Philippines will begin vaccinating next month despite suffering the second worst outbreak of coronavirus in Southeast Asia with more than half a million infections and more than 10,000 deaths.
But officials acknowledge that they have an upward struggle to convince many people to take it, in addition to logistical difficulties in reaching 2,000 inhabited islands with a precarious health system in the Southeast Asian archipelago.
“Messaging needs to be very specific and evidence-based to encourage people to receive vaccines,” Health Ministry Undersecretary Rosario Vergeire told Reuters.
“We are assuring Filipinos that any vaccine that will be introduced and provided will go through a strict regulatory process.”
Graph: Routine vaccination coverage in the Philippines, 2015-2020:
SPACE DENGVAXIA
Confidence in vaccines was settled by the controversy over Dengvaxia of the French company Sanofi.
More than 800,000 children were quickly launched in 2016 to protect them from dengue; it was banned after its manufacturer said it could make the disease worse in people who had not been previously exposed to the infection.
This led to two congressional investigations and more than 100 criminal cases linking child deaths to dengue shooting, although these links have never been proven.
Sanofi has repeatedly said that Dengvaxia is safe and effective and that the vaccine has been approved for the United States and the European Union to use it.
After this episode, the Philippines fell from one of the top ten countries to rely on vaccines until it topped 70th place. The number of fully vaccinated children fell from 85% in 2010 to 69% in 2019.
To address the fears, health workers would hold meetings at city hall and online and be given special training on how to answer questions, Senate Carlito Galvez, a former army general who led the anti-COVID-19 campaign.
The goal is to inoculate 70 million adults this year.
‘BIG PROBLEM’
In some parts of the southern Philippines, the great fear is a state-sponsored death campaign, which is not entirely unreasonable in a country where Duterte’s drug war has left nearly 6,000 dead since he took office. in 2016.
The remote southern regions are the scene of communist and Islamist uprisings.
“Some of the information shared on Facebook and text messages said that the COVID-19 vaccine contained a microchip that President Duterte can remotely control, and once a button is pressed, the person who received the vaccine will die,” he said. say Nasser Alimoda, a government doctor in South Lanao Province.
Everywhere, there is concern about specific vaccines that the Philippines also plans to use, particularly for the vaccine from Chinese company Sinovac Biotech, for which one study showed effectiveness of just over 50%, although another gave him more than 91%.
An opinion poll showed that less than a third of Filipinos were willing to inoculate themselves with the coronavirus.
“Vaccination programs will be destroyed if people refuse to receive the shots,” former Health Minister Esperanza Cabral told Reuters.
Apasrah Mapupuno, the head of the South Lanao government health team, said he had asked dozens of health workers and others if they wanted to roll up their sleeves to get a vaccine against COVID-19.
No one said yes.
“That’s the big problem,” Mapupuno said. “How can they convince community health workers to get vaccinated if they don’t sell themselves COVID-19 vaccines?”
Edited by Matthew Tostevin, Robert Birsel