By Luel Galarpe/PNA
CEBU CITY — The Department of Health in Central Visayas (DOH-7) hopes to vaccinate 80 percent of its target this week as it extended its region-wide anti-measles campaign for one more week.
Ruff Vincent Valdevieso, Nurse III of the DOH-7 Local Health Support Division, told the Philippine News Agency on Wednesday that they have already vaccinated 169,619 children, or 69.49 percent of their 244,000 target.
However, Valdevieso said they will no longer conduct house-to-house visitations this week but only catch up with those children who were not around during the visit of Rural Health Unit personnel in their homes.
“We will just be mopping up or catching up, and hopefully we can reach at least 80 percent of our target,” he said.
From January 1 to April 3 this year, the DOH-7 has recorded 1,294 cases of measles in Central Visayas with 11 deaths.
Valdevieso said the latest fatality was a one-year-old boy from Toledo City, who passed away last March 17 at the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center here in Cebu City.
