HE said — SHE said

They added emotions, coupled with all the shrieking and antics to flavor what should have been issues of graft, corruption and electioneering into the mix.

It is unfortunate that medical experts have allowed lawyers and politicians to act as harbingers of death on the issue of Dengvaxia, when all that was needed was prove that its distribution to the public by the previous administration was an ugly act of electioneering.

Government was hot on the trail of several politicos, including former President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino and several key members of his Cabinet, for using Dengvaxia as a political tool. But several personalities salivating for President Rodrigo Duterte’s attention have snatched away the intent of the probe to suit their ends.

Filipino children aged nine and up have been administered with one dose of the anti-dengue vaccine as part of a government program that cost the public P3.5 billion pesos ($69.54 million).

It is not the purchase of the drug that put Aquino and his men under scrutiny, though. It was the time and manner of the Dengvaxia’s distribution that questions have been raised about the propriety of the program.

Aquino had been in talks with Sanofi since 2014, just after the drug maker declared as successful Dengvaxia’s two parallel Phase 3 clinical studies, with the Philippines — where the dengue mosquito is common — as a participant.

Dengvaxia is the first anti-dengue vaccine since its development was started as early as 1929. The drug is on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) List of Essential Medicines. It is in the roster of the safest and most effective medicines needed in a health system.

To make it short, Dengvaxia is safe as deemed by experts. It is currently approved for use in many countries.

By February 2016, Aquino’s Health Secretary Janette Garin was launching Dengvaxia for use of young Filipinos placed under the program.

Only that it was three months away from the presidential elections. Dengvaxia had become a political weapon to prop up the candidacy of Aquino’s chosen one, Mar Roxas, who at that point needed all the boost he could muster as he was trailing Mr. Duterte and Sen. Grace Poe badly.

A month after Aquino’s purchase order to Zuellig Pharma, the distributor of Dengvaxia, a paper released by the WHO called for more studies into the vaccine as it “may be ineffective or may even increase that risk in those who are seronegative at the time of first vaccination.”

Seronegative means people who have not yet contracted the dengue disease.

And then by July 2016, the WHO said Dengvaxia “may act as a silent natural infection that primes seronegative vaccines to experience a secondary-like infection upon their first exposure to dengue virus.” (It) “may be ineffective or may theoretically even increase the future risk of hospitalized or severe dengue illness in those who are seronegative at the time of first vaccination regardless of age.”

Quickly, Garin’s successor former Health Secretary Paulyn Ubial, suspended the school-based immunization program, reducing to just 489,003 students who have received the first dose qualified to the take second and third doses.

These became the ammunition of anti-vaxxers and anti-Aquino personalities to hit back. Only that they added emotions, coupled with all the shrieking and antics to flavor what should have been issues of graft, corruption and electioneering into the mix.

The results have been obvious. They have created a nationwide fear and aversion to drugs, especially vaccines which government gives for free.

And lately, aside from dengue, which fills hospitals with patients to this moment, an outbreak of measles and polio have also been raised by the DoH.

Polio had been eradicated by the Philippines for two decades already. But the DoH admitted to its reemergence.

These are diseases which can be controlled. But fear of vaccination scattered no less by some officials who are non-medical experts are keeping people away from the medical centers which government had built and funded and manned and placed where the poorest should be served.

Many hands are bloodied by this amplified mess. They deserve that mosquito bite.

If there is anything to be blamed for the series of health scares we have been having, it is human paranoia.

The dengue vaccine scandal that rocked the nation unveiled another “disease” now bringing back supposedly extinct viruses and a seemingly undefeatable strain of illnesses.

Fear sowed fear, and now we have outbreaks of measles and polio hanging like doomsday in our horizon.

The “Dengvaxia scare” scared off people against vaccination in general — a deadly consequence our “well-meaning” leaders failed to see in their avid pursuit of “justice.”

Now government must work triple time to stem a further spread after the Department of Health (DoH) on 19 September declared a polio epidemic after a case was discovered in Lanao de Sur.

The fact that this is the country’s first confirmed case after 19 years of being polio-free is rightfully a cause for worry. (The fact that the date it was announced was 9-19-19 is just creepy.)

The Philippines had been polio-free since October 2000, the last case being reported in 1993. Other countries had also declared the virus “eradicated” after massive anti-polio campaigns involving governments and influential organizations like Rotary International.

That it should return after almost two decades begs the question: how did this happen?

The Health department sees “low vaccination coverage, poor early surveillance of polio symptoms and substandard sanitation practices as culprits in this reemergence,” one report says.

Low vaccination coverage could have been caused by the fear against vaccines in general that arose from the stench of a scandal called Dengvaxia, as well as a poisonous brew of ignorance, negligence and complacency.

In another report, UNICEF executive director Henrietta Fore lists the other reasons for the resurgence of diseases like measles and polio in many countries in the world as “poor health infrastructure, civil strife, low community awareness and complacency.”

She said, “Almost all of these cases are preventable and yet children are getting infected even in places where there is simply no excuse. Measles may be the disease, but, all too often, the real infection is misinformation, mistrust and complacency.”

The last three are deadly — they spread something much harder to stamp out: fear and ignorance, negligence and carelessness.

The DoH has its work cut out, targeting such negativity, even as it conducts a mass immunization campaign to catch up after years of declining immunization programs.

As a report detailed recently, “Figures from the UNICEF showed that the proportion of children aged 12 to 23 months who received all basic vaccinations dropped from 77 percent in 2013 to 70 percent in 2017. The DoH said that last year, the vaccine coverage fell to only 40 percent.”

The target of “95 percent is needed to assure herd immunity, or the protection of society against the spread of contagious diseases.”

Now why has there been such a big drop, even before the dengue vaccine scare? What has the DoH been doing?

To top it all, the sewage samples collected by DoH which tested positive for poliovirus also connects the problem to population and pollution… which are linked to poverty… which, in turn, has to do with the “outbreak” of greed and corruption that allowed so much abuse against man and nature to flourish.

Clearly, these recent outbreaks of dengue, measles and polio (yes, even the swine flu!) are the pestilence-level signs of our times.

If we have not realized by now that everything is connected — from the way we live to the way we see our place in this world — we are in deep trouble, indeed.