Cagayan de Oro City — The Department of Social Welfare and Development in Northern Mindanao has tapped the expertise of local health officials to prevent possible viral infection caused by measles to Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program beneficiaries.
Jerome Humawan, Family Development Session (FDS) focal of Pantawid Pamilya, said the doctors, nurses, and midwives have conducted lectures about the potentially deadly infection during the monthly conduct of FDS in order to protect the beneficiaries against measles, especially children, pregnant mothers and immuno-compromised individual.
Northern Mindanao has 248,606 Pantawid Pamilya beneficiaries and is divided into 8,815 cluster group. Each cluster is composed of 30 to 35 households.
Humawan disclosed that during the first two months of this year local health officials intensified its campaign against possible spread of measles virus among beneficiaries.
“It was a region wide activity of FDS where majority of the resource persons are from the Department of Health, registered nurses from RN heals, midwives of LGUs, and city and municipal health officers,” he said.
During the discussion, local health officials emphasized on the importance of measles vaccination to Pantawid Pamilya grantees, as it is a highly contagious disease. A single measles case can infect up to 18 other individuals.
Measles is an infection of the respiratory system, immune system and skin caused by paramyxovirus of the genus Morbillivirus.
During the FDS, the health officials told the parents that most children with measles easily recover, but the illness may cause death because of pneumonia, acute diarrhea with severe dehydration or acute encephalitis.
Pantawid Pamilya is a program of the national government that promotes human capital accumulation by incentivizing the children’s capacity to stay in school. The accumulation of human capital is necessary to break the transmission of inter-generational poverty and to make growth more inclusive while FDS is one of the conditionalities of the program that beneficiaries should comply with in order to receive cash grants.
Written by Oliver Badel Inodeo, DSWD
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