One in three children five years and below risk contracting polio and other diseases because of low vaccination rates, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.
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Rabindra Abeyasinghe, WHO representative to the Philippines, said the current immunization rate for polio is at 66 percent, far below the 95 percent target.
“We need to radically raise that up and protect all the children,” Abeyasinghe said in a press briefing Wednesday.
At 95-percent immunization, even vulnerable children would be protected from the disease, he said.
Some 11-million children under the age of five are the most vulnerable to vaccine-preventable illnesses such as polio, tuberculosis, poliomyelitis, diphtheria, tentanus, and measles because of low immunization rates, he said.
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Despite the recent Dengvaxia scare, clinically proven vaccines are safe and are the only way to prevent an outbreak of highly infectious diseases that have no cure, Abeyasinghe said.
He said parents should have their children vaccinated with three doses of the oral polio vaccine.
“It is critically important that children have access to vaccines,” he said.
So far, the Department of Health has confirmed two cases of polio—after 19 years without a single incident. The first was a three-year-old girl in Lanao del Sur; the second, a five-year-old boy in Laguna.
Despite these, Abeyasinghe said that the Philippines has not lost its “polio-free” status because there have been no cases attributed to wild poliovirus.
The virus circulating is a vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 (VDPV2), which has been found in Manila and Davao waterways.
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Meanwhile, seven suspected cases of polio in the Zamboanga Peninsula turned out to be negative for the virus, the Health department said Wednesday.
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