MANILA – The government’s dengue immunization program for children has been expanded to cover not only targeted schools in Metro Manila but also Quezon City, Caloocan, Manila and Makati.
Children aged 9 to 14 years in the four additional cities could get the free vaccine in community health centers or city health offices, head of the Department of Health’s (DOH) National Dengue Prevention and Control Program, Dr. Rhodora Cruz, said in an interview Wednesday.
The vaccine is given in three separate doses, six months apart.
Cruz noted that unlike in the school-based immunization program, parental consent is no longer required for the vaccination in the community health center, for as long as the parent is with the child.
She, however, emphasized that those who have pre-existing conditions and ailments, such as bacterial infections, will not be given the vaccine.
The dengue immunization program began in 2016 as a school-based program that targeted nine-year-old Grade 4 students in public schools in three regions that had the highest number of dengue cases, namely the National Capital Region (NCR), Central Luzon and Calabarzon.
Cruz said the four cities were chosen because they contributed much to the high number of dengue cases in the NCR, where 35 deaths from dengue have been recorded so far this year.
Provinces with the most number of cases are Cebu with 11 percent, South Cotabato with 6.3 percent, and Pampanga with 4.6 percent.
A total of 43,770 dengue cases were reported nationwide from Jan. 1 to July 1 this year. The figure is 36.8 percent lower than the 69,297 dengue cases recorded in the same period last year.
Meanwhile, in an effort to strengthen the campaign to prevent the spread of dengue, the DOH has formed an alliance with the Philippine Pharmacists Association (PPhA), GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Mercury Drug Corp. (MDC), Smart Parenting, and CNN Philippines.
In a roundtable discussion held in Makati on Wednesday, stakeholders discussed the need to fill the "knowledge gap" in raising awareness on the prevention and control of dengue and its management.
Seeking early medical attention is very crucial, along with fluid replacement in managing dengue, Cruz said during the discussion.
GSK manager Randy Silva said a survey done last May showed big gaps on how people perceive dengue. Citing an example, he said 80 percent of the respondents thought that there is a cure for dengue while 69 percent thought that antibiotics could help.
Silva explained that there is no cure for dengue, and antibiotics are for bacterial infections and not dengue.
Only 42 percent knew paracetamol could be used to manage the fever, which he said means that more than half of the population still use other types of medicines, such as ibuprofen and aspirin that could be harmful.
He however noted that 99 percent of the respondents knew that fever is a symptom of dengue but only 79 percent knew that rashes are symptoms as well. Half of the respondents knew the other symptoms -- muscle pain, vomiting, nose bleed, diarrhea, and severe headache, he added.
Silva said that if people know how to spot the symptoms, the disease could be diagnosed early and the patient could seek early consultation.
Yolanda Robles, president of PPhA, said pharmacists should guide people in purchasing over-the-counter medicine that could ease dengue fever.
As health professionals, Robles said, pharmacists should ask a patient the symptoms that he feels so he could be given guidance on what medicine to purchase, or be given advice to go see a doctor.
She added that they have agreed that paracetamol should be the first medicine to use to handle fever.
"In the pharmacy profession, we now see the relevance of training pharmacists to be experts in promoting dengue awareness and dengue management because pharmacists are located in many places that are strategic, so that we can easily advise patients what to give," Robles said.
Under the alliance, GSK is planning to reach this year some 4,000 health care professionals and pharmacists to enlist their help in educating the public on the symptoms and management of dengue at the barangay and schools levels.
Part of the plan is to encourage pharmacies across the country to display materials and show videos from the DOH to reach the target population. (PNA)
