By R. G. Antonet Go/PNA
ZAMBOANGA CITY — The City Health Office (CHO) is intensifying its immunization campaign to ensure the protection of infants aged nine months to one-year-old from illness.
This came as local health officials are apprehensive over the increasing number of newborns probably becoming more susceptible to illness since there is a continuous decline in the rate of fully-immunized infants in the past years.
Corazon Pagotaisidro, CHO immunization program coordinator, on Saturday disclosed they have launched a house-to-house immunization drive, especially in far-flung areas.
CHO is targeting to immunize 24,030 infants for the year 2018. Of the total, the health office has already immunized 16,879 infants as of the third quarter of this year.
Pagotaisidro said the vaccines given to the infants include three doses of Oral Polio Vaccine, three doses of Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine, Bacille Calmette-Guerin (BCG), Hepatitis B, and three doses of Pentavalent vaccines.
She noted that the number of fully immunized newborn has steadily declined since 2015.
“It’s a risky situation. One reason why there was an outbreak of measles is that the immunization rate is declining,” she said.
She said the Dengvaxia scare is one of the reasons why there was a continuous decline in the rate of fully-immunized infants in this city. The other reason was that the family are transients.
She advised parents not to be apprehensive since the vaccines used to immunize infants are 100 percent safe.
Pagotaisidro said the vaccines used to immunized infants are not new ones, such as Dengvaxia that reportedly had resulted in adverse effects on children.
