Duterte: Communities play an important role in making vaccination less traumatic for kids

MANILA, Philippines — President Rodrigo Duterte has urged communities to work together to dispel children's fears of getting injected with COVID-19 jabs and to make vaccination a less traumatic experience for them.

During a meeting of the government's pandemic task force last Monday, vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. told Duterte that local governments would be required to vaccinate at least 70% of their eligible population and 80 percent of their senior citizens. He also cited the need to conduct house-to-house vaccination and to direct all agencies and sectors to actively participate in providing primary doses and boosters in schools and workplaces.

Duterte said the community has a role to play in making a child's first vaccination memorable.

"I’d like to comment on the participation of the community in making the first vaccination for children a livelier and in a festive mood," the president said.

"The cooperation of the community (is needed) in making the environment of the moment memorable to the child. They are entertained, their fears are dispelled and they won't have much traumatic experience," he added.

Duterte then recalled that he was circumcised when he was ten years old. He said he was in Grade 3 when he was persuaded to fall in line with others who wanted to undergo the procedure.

"I was told not to do it because my father and my mother would get angry. But I was a child, ten years, so they said, 'Fall in line, you, you.' I said, 'Me, me. Yes.' The following day, there was blood on my mat and then my mom fumed," Duterte said in Filipino.  

Duterte said he had a trauma because of the procedure, which he said was done under trees when he was a child.

Galvez told Duterte the atmosphere in the pediatric vaccination sites in Zamboanga and Basilan was festive.

"There was a lot of funfare," Galvez said.

"Going to the mall for the first time became an incentive for them. They were showing cartoons...Children were happy and they were not afraid because they knew they would have a loot bag, they were in the mall, and they could ask their fathers and mothers to buy them something," he added.

Duterte thanked doctors and groups that are helping the government in its vaccination efforts.

"I join you in expressing, I said, my gratitude for making it possible. Each and every one of you, thank you to all of you. Sometimes, you were able to teach your government," the president said.  

"We do not claim to be really in perfect harmony with all and any events but your contributions, especially in making it a more memorable experience for the child would go a long way also to how he improves his paradigm towards life," he added.

Galvez said about 65% of the targeted minors aged 12 to 17 years old or 8.23 million persons have been fully vaccinated. Close to 438,000 children aged five to 11 years old have received their first dose in a span of two weeks.

The government aims to inoculate 12.7 million minors aged 12 to 17 years old and 15.56 million children aged five to eleven years old this year.