The United Nations Children's Fund or UNICEF has recently bewailed the fact that one million children in the Philippines "have not received a single dose of childhood vaccine, leaving them susceptible to transmission of various life-threatening vaccine-preventable diseases such as polio, measles, and tuberculosis," as reports said.

The same statement from UNICEF also shed light on what could have led to this monstrous oversight — saying these "persistent missed opportunities" may have been caused by "past governance challenges, low demand for services, and disruptions by the Covid-19 pandemic."

Aside from the three diseases mentioned above, Covid-19 is the most recent that poses a great risk to children's lives. In fact, a report in February this year revealed that most kids of pediatric age who died of the coronavirus disease were unvaccinated.

The Department of Health in Central Visayas recorded 121 pediatric deaths due to Covid-19 from April 2020 to January 2022.

Dr. Mary Jean Loreche, DoH-7 regional director, said because "children are social beings", we "need to get them back to the environment that is best suited for them, so they can be children again, play, talk, laugh, learn, and interact with fellow children."

Now that President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. has ruled that the mandatory wearing of masks indoors will be lifted, such freedom will once again be felt not just by kids but everyone who has chafed under the confines of health restrictions.

Still, because the pandemic continues to pose limitations and health risks to all, how the DoH will move forward under the helm of a new secretary remains a question that critics say has been left too long unanswered.

The recent appointment of a former police chief did not help the situation any, as an increasingly cranky populace wonders how in the world a former Philippine National Police official could possibly fulfill the functions of an undersecretary in this crucial agency.

As we all know, before the invisible virus came to disrupt our lives, the health department had already been beset with problems and perennial challenges. The pandemic uncovered many of these, including the lack of personnel (shaved off by the continued flight of Filipino professionals to greener pastures), lack of hospital facilities (we recall the first Covid-19 patients dying inside vehicles parked in hospital grounds, and lack of equipment and medical supplies.