Philippine measles outbreak fed by distrust of vaccines – rooted in vaccination scandal

A Philippine Red Cross worker administers a measles vaccine in Manila. (Noel Celis / AFP/Getty Images)

March 22 -- Los Angeles Times

The 3-year-old boy squirmed in his mother’s arms, an IV drip unspooling from his wrist, his skin flush with a pale pink rash.

As a doctor struggled to put an inhaler between the boy’s blistered lips to calm his coughing, his mother, Norayah Cabugatan, explained how she had resisted vaccinating her son and his two siblings against measles.

The measles virus, with its rash and often high fever, may cause dangerous complications. But Cabugatan had been spooked by the idea of a vaccine, having heard it could have fatal side effects.

“I was scared,” Cabugatan, 32, said during a recent visit to a Manila hospital. “What I’ve heard on TV, it was really scary.”

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