The Department of Health (DOH), Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG), Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), Pasay City Local Government Unit (LGU) and the Senior Citizens’ Partylist came together to showcase how every sector is able to contribute to improving vaccination coverage during this year’s World Immunization Week Health Connect Forum.
Health Connect Forum- Each Sector's Role in the Big Catch-up
The forum, organized by the the Philippine Foundation
for Vaccination (PFV), Philippine Medical Association (PMA), Pharmaceutical and
Healthcare Association (PHAP), and
Sanofi Pasteur Inc., focused on “Each Sector’s Role in the Big Catch-up”
to ensure the protection of people of all ages against vaccine preventable
diseases.
Meanwhile, DILG Undersecretary Margarita Gutierrez noted that learnings from the COVID vaccination program can be used for all vaccination programs. “We developed the LGU guide for rehabilitation and recovery for COVID-19 to serve as an operational manual for similar situations,” she said.
This was echoed by Pasay City Health Officer Dr. Mercedes
Noble, who coordinates the city’s National Immunization Program. “Our partners are very supportive in using
their venues for mass vaccination programs. Our very dedicated barangay health
center staff go beyond their office hours and even weekends, so no child will
be left behind.”
DSWD Director for Policy Development and Planning Bureau Rhodora Alday further shared how their programs are designed to address all of the social economic dimension which includes access to health services.
Director Alday said that the 4P’s program (Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program) helped incentivize beneficiaries for vaccination. “We are targeting around 700,000 households that have children below 18 years old to be enrolled in the program. Hopefully DSWD will help increase the immunization campaign through this program. Moreover, with a strong partnership that we have at the LGU we can design convergence programs to help free immunization available to people,” said Dir. Alday.
The forum also highlighted that catch-up immunization should not be limited to routine childhood vaccines. Atty. Charles de Belen from the Senior Citizens’ Partylist talked about ensuring our elderly loved ones are also fully protected from infectious diseases such as the flu. “Through our legislative agenda and initiatives, we try to expand the availability of immunizations that are inaccessible to senior citizens,” he said. Partylist Representative Congressman Ordanes’ HB 2097 recently passed the first reading in Congress.
“We now have vaccines to prevent more than 20 life-threatening diseases for people of all ages. In this age and time, no one should die from vaccine preventable diseases,” said Mr. Teodoro B. Padilla, PHAP Executive Director Mr. Teodoro Padilla. With PHAP bringing together these stakeholders, both public and private sectors have shown strong support for continued vaccination efforts this World Immunization Week.
The media forum, moderated by journalist and health
advocate Jing Castañeda, can be viewed on the Facebook pages of PMA, PFV and
PHAP.
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