A measles outbreak in the Philippines partly blamed on vaccination fears has claimed 136 lives — half of them children ages 1 to 4 — and 8,400 others have fallen ill with the contagious disease, a health official said Monday.
Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said a sweeping immunization drive that began last week in the hard-hit capital, Manila, and four provincial regions may contain the outbreak by April.
“No ifs, no buts, no conditions, you just have to bring your children and trust that the vaccines … will save your children,” Duque told the Associated Press by phone. “That’s the absolute answer to this outbreak.”
In a TV address Friday, President Rodrigo Duterte warned of fatal complications and urged that children be immunized.
Infections skyrocketed by more than 1,000 percent in metropolitan Manila — which has a population of more than 12 million — in January compared to last year, according to health officials.
Duque said the government’s information blitz was helping restore trust in the immunization program, which was stopped in 2017 amid controversy over an anti-dengue vaccine made by French drugmaker Sanofi Pasteur that some officials tied to the deaths of at least three kids.
The Philippines halted the anti-dengue immunization drive after Sanofi said a study showed the vaccine may actually increase the risks of severe dengue infections.
More than 830,000 children were injected with the Dengvaxia vaccine under the campaign, which was launched in 2016 under then-President Benigno Aquino III.
Sanofi officials told congressional hearings in the country that the Dengvaxia vaccine was safe and effective and would reduce dengue infections if the vaccination efforts continued.
“It seems the faith has come back,” Duque said of public trust in the government’s immunization drive, citing the inoculation of about 130,000 of 450,000 people targeted for anti-measles shots in Manila in just a week.
News about vaccination fears in the Philippines comes amid recent reports of one of the worst measles outbreaks in New York state in about 20 years — including in Orthodox communities in Brooklyn and Rockland County.
Last month, 55 cases of the virus were reported among unvaccinated children in Borough Park, Bensonhurst, Midwood/Marine Park and Williamsburg since October, according to the city Department of Health.
There were 112 confirmed cases in the rest of the state as of Jan. 8.
The startling spike prompted Rockland and state health officials to recommend that parents have their children get the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine earlier than scheduled.
The World Health Organization has warned that efforts to stop the spread of measles globally have been hampered in part by anti-vaccine skepticism.
The number of cases around the world was up about 50 percent, according to the WHO.
“This is an absolutely avoidable outbreak,” said Gundo Weiler, a WHO representative in Manila, the Financial Times reported.
Heidi Larson, head of the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the alarming numbers are a worrying sign of the influence posed by anti-vaxxers.
“It’s very serious. Historically measles outbreaks go up and down but this is a pretty dramatic increase,” Larson said, according to the UK’s Guardian newspaper.
President Trump also has expressed skepticism over vaccines, having invited Andrew Wakefield — a discredited doctor who has suggested a connection between the MMR vaccine and autism — to his inaugural ball.
Last week, the wife of White House communications head Bill Shine defended measles and other childhood diseases, arguing that they “keep you healthy & fight cancer.”
On Twitter, Darla Shine slammed as fake news a report on CNN about a measles outbreak across the US blamed on parents not vaccinating their children.
CNN reported that as of the week ending Feb. 8, more than 100 cases of measles had been diagnosed in 10 states, citing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In 2017, measles killed about 136,000 people around the world, according to the WHO’s preliminary figures.
Countries have until April to report measles cases registered in 2018 to the WHO — but the UN agency said the data it had received so far showed that about 229,000 cases had already been reported, compared with 170,000 for 2017.
With Post wires