MANILA — A widespread child vaccination campaign in the Philippines this year inoculated more than seven million Filipinos but encountered misinformation that led 230,000 individuals to decline the jab.
The Philippine Department of Health reported that concerns about side effects accounted for 66 percent of refusals. The department identified misinformation spread by social media influencers as a primary driver of vaccine fear across the archipelago.
Jenette Torres Odena's three-year-old son fell ill days after receiving a measles-rubella vaccine. Doctors found no link between his condition and the inoculation, and he fully recovered. But his photograph circulated on Facebook alongside false claims that the vaccine had killed him.
"I kept praying for my son to recover and suddenly they were killing him on Facebook," Odena said.
Facebook content creator Maharani Sona Shiloh incorporated the child's photo into a video presenting it as evidence that the vaccination campaign was harming children. The video, which garnered hundreds of thousands of views, paired the boy's image with a photograph of President Donald Trump and the text "Everyday slaughter."
Shiloh cited Trump's recent move to reduce the number of vaccine doses administered to American children. Facebook later removed Shiloh's page.
Shiloh, 44, rejected accusations of spreading misinformation, calling herself a human rights advocate. "People call us crazy," she told AFP. "Why is it that human beings don't have the right to challenge these things?"
Her anti-vaccine advocacy began years before the Covid-19 pandemic. Shiloh connected with church groups and advocacy circles that also campaign against policies such as SIM card registration, which they associate with a "treacherous New World Order." Some of her videos, viewed millions of times, claimed vaccines contain "harmful substances including human placenta and formalin" and issued warnings about the World Health Organization.
The misinformation recycled conspiracy theories that gained global traction during the pandemic. It also leveraged lingering public fears in the Philippines stemming from a botched dengue vaccine rollout a decade ago.
Daniel Fritz Silvallana, a health communication researcher at Deakin University in Australia, said vaccine hesitancy "should not simply be understood as a lack of scientific knowledge among the public." He added that "in the Philippine context, it is also connected to questions of trust, politics, and people's previous experiences with vaccination and public health institutions."
The Philippines has struggled for years to restore routine childhood immunization rates. The decline in coverage contributed to a polio resurgence in 2019 and recurring measles outbreaks.
