EDITORIAL - Vaccine access, affordability

Several years after hysteria over Dengvaxia made Filipinos shun even vaccines with long-established efficacy, vaccine hesitancy in the country is finally declining.

This is according to health experts, even as they stressed that the country has yet to recover the momentum for achieving 95 percent coverage of “zero-dose” children, or those who have not received any vaccine long used in routine childhood immunization.

With vaccine hesitancy no longer at the irrational levels generated by the Dengvaxia scare, affordability and access have become the main factors driving failure to get life-saving vaccines.

The government provides free vaccines at state-run health centers. But for people in remote areas, and those who want to get immunized using vaccines from non-government sources, access can be a problem.

For many who are not easily reached by government health services, such alternative immunizations can be costly.

The scare over the anti-dengue vaccine led to a drastic fall in childhood immunization. This has been blamed for the return of polio in the country and a spike in measles cases. As of January this year, cases of vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles-rubella was up by 32 percent compared to 2024, with unvaccinated people accounting for 73 percent of those infected.

Health experts have cited lingering social trauma from the Dengvaxia scare. Still, they are happy to note greater openness to vaccination in the country. Surveys in the first quarter of 2025 showed over 85 percent of Filipinos believing that vaccines are safe and important for health.

April 24 to 30 is observed as World Immunization Week. “For every generation, vaccines work” is the theme, meant to prod governments to ramp up childhood vaccination coverage in partnership with organizations such as the United Nations Children’s Fund and the Philippine Red Cross.

Access and affordability are not insurmountable problems. Having identified the barriers to greater vaccine coverage, the government can work with partner organizations and the private sector to save more lives through immunization.