Cebu community on edge as vaccinated boy gets dengue

CEBU CITY — Jujen Ababon was rushed to the hospital due to severe nosebleeding that followed a high fever last Tuesday, just six months after the 10-year-old boy received a free shot of the antidengue vaccine, Dengvaxia, from the Department of Health (DOH).

He was taken to the government-run Talisay City District Hospital before he was transferred to private Cebu South General Hospital where he was placed in the intensive care unit.

The boy from Talisay City, Cebu, was diagnosed with dengue.

Ababon was declared in stable condition on Thursday, but this did not ease the anxiety of his family and several of their neighbors in Sitio Kaduldulan of Barangay Lawaan III, whose children also had received the Dengvaxia vaccine.

“Thank God my son is safe now, and the doctors assured he will be placed in a normal ward. But we still need to pay the hospital bill (which hospital staff told me) will be at most P30,000,” said the boy’s mother, Jinny, who earns a living by making cleaning rags.

The boy’s father, Junrey Ababon, 31, works as a mechanic in a shop in Barangay Tabunok, Talisay.

He said they managed to secure a P20,000-loan from his employer as down payment to the hospital.

He said he was embarrassed to borrow such a large sum but he and his wife only had P1,000 for the hospital bills.

“She [Jinny] helped in convincing the owner of the shop to lend us money,” Junrey said.

Officers from the DOH-Central Visayas (DOH-7) told the couple that their son had a normal case of dengue and this was not due to the vaccine. The boy only had the first of the three required inoculations.

Still, officials of the DOH-7 and the provincial health office (PHO) said they would look into his case since her son was the first Dengvaxia recipient who had dengue.

Jinny said she decided to avail of the free immunization, fearing that if he wasn’t vaccinated she might lose him to dengue.

Dengue had claimed 14 lives in Cebu this year, according to PHO data.

“Dengvaxia was given for free. So, of course, I made sure Jujen would be one of the beneficiaries because back then, we (saw it) as a rare opportunity. We know the shots were expensive, and dengue is a very dangerous disease,” she said.

Jinny said that a daughter of one of their neighbors died of dengue last year, the first dengue fatality in Sitio Kaduldulan.

“I don’t want the same thing to happen to my son, who never had dengue before,” she said.

Based on PHO records, Talisay had the most number of dengue cases in the entire province, which recorded 453 patients and no fatality from January to November this year.

Jinny said she regretted their decision to have her son vaccinated after learning from Dengvaxia manufacturer Sanofi Pasteur that the vaccine could cause severe symptoms in those who had no previous exposure to the mosquito-borne virus.

She said the vaccination made them complacent, thinking that their son was immune after he got his first shot.

At least five children aged 9 to 12 in Sitio Kaduldulan also were inoculated with Dengvaxia as beneficiaries of the government’s dengue immunization program.

According to data from DOH-7, more than 150,000 children in Cebu had been vaccinated.

Lileth Bistal, one of the Ababons’ neighbors, said her family was closely monitoring her 10-year-old niece, who also was vaccinated.

“We were really complacent, just like Jujen’s mother. Now, we’re so worried since the news about Dengvaxia broke out, that it may have adverse effects on children who have no history of dengue,” she said.

DOH-7 advised parents of Dengvaxia beneficiaries not to panic and report to the rural health units if their children showed even the slightest symptoms of dengue.