SPECIAL vaccination days will be held in May in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) as the national vaccination program shifts focus to areas with low inoculation coverage.
According to Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr., the chief implementer of the National Task Force Against COVID-19, the government aims to inoculate 215,776 individuals in the BARMM, or about 60 percent of some 1.5 million unvaccinated residents.
The low vaccination coverage in the region is the program’s “biggest problem,” Galvez said during President Rodrigo Duterte’s “Talk to the People” on Tuesday night.
Seventy-one barangays and towns in the provinces of Basilan, Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi will be covered in the special vaccination drive. In Maguindanao alone, the province with the biggest population, about 70,000 individuals are targeted for jabbing.
Government data show that the BARMM continues to lag behind among regions, with only 27 percent of its target population fully vaccinated. Those who have received booster shots are only at 2.2 percent.
Health officials in the region admit that it is vulnerable to a possible surge in coronavirus infections.
“With our low vaccination coverage, we don’t have the necessary protection … especially against the dreaded effects of COVID-19,” said Dr. Amirel Usman, director-general of the BARMM Ministry of Health (MOH).
Usman said the risk was being compounded by “superspreader events that are going on around us, brought about by politicians’ election campaigns.”
The inoculation drive in the region is hobbled by the residents’ hesitancy and outright refusal.
Some of the issues raised are the supposed doubtful efficacy of vaccines against the coronavirus, the alleged “deadly” side effects, and religious beliefs, such as that vaccinations nullify fasting or are not halal (permitted under Islamic law).
In the holy month of Ramadan, which began on April 3, Muslims fast from just before sunrise to sundown as a religious obligation. (©Philippine Daily Inquirer 2022/Jerome Aning, Kathleen de Villa, Taher G. Solaiman)
