Is there a campaign to destroy Acosta?

Batas Mauricio .

IT looks certainly like there is an aggressive campaign to destroy lawyer Persida Rueda Acosta, the head of the Public Attorneys’ Office (PAO) of the Department of Justice (DOJ), on the issue of the reported measles outbreak in the country today, where she is being inordinately blamed for the current rise in the number of measles cases in the four corners of the archipelago.

Clearly, Acosta is currently being crucified through a severe propaganda campaign intended to malign her after her furious criticisms that linked the deaths of several young school children recently to their Dengvaxia vaccination. Many are of the thought that she is being destroyed by those who got adversely affected by her disclosures on the Dengvaxia scare through the media, as a form of retaliation.

Maybe our readers will ask me why I said this. Well, just take a look at the news articles published by online news networks (or social media sites that are publishing news stories). You can clearly read news articles trying to portray that there some kind of a measles outbreak has erupted, with about 4,300 cases of measles and with 70 people believed to have died of the disease.

The evident aim of the published news articles, saying that there are now thousands of measles cases in the country is to make it appear that measles cases increased in 2019, because of fear of vaccination arising from the hysteria created by PAO Chief Atty. Persida Rueda Acosta’s disclosures about the Dengvaxia vaccine. These news articles and other earlier reports, I believe, are clearly some vile propaganda designed against Acosta.

The fact is that, as if on cue or like a planned scene in a discredited movie script, a senator who is being held responsible for the reported P10 billion medical fund mess in the agency that she once a part of is now asking Acosta to resign, allegedly because she is to blame in the rise in measles cases. Luckily, President Duterte and Davao Mayor Sara Duterte Carpio continue to trust Acosta, so the senator’s call had not produced any effect whatsoever.

So the question that needs to be answered is this: Is there any truth to reports that the number of measles cases have increased this year, in 2019? And was it Acosta’s disclosures on the Dengvaxia vaccine that caused such increase, if any? In answering these questions, we have to know, what really are the statistics from World Health Organization (WHO) when it comes to measles? It would be better indeed if we looked at reports from WHO to understand the truth.

A report by WHO in 2018 that was officially published by its Philippine office and which can be read at http://cnnphilippines.com/news/2018/11/28/measles-outbreak-philippines-world-health-organization-2018.html indicated that there really is nothing to worry about at this time, because the number of measles cases on 2018 stood at 17,298 cases that year while there are only about 4,300 cases this year.

Comparing the 17,298 cases of measles in 2018 to the 4,300 in 2019, it is not going to be difficult to realize that the number of measles cases in 2019, when compared to the number of measles cases in 2018, is still far lower. In fine, our countrymen need not worry, even though some people want to make it appear, including the media, that there is an on-going measles outbreak in 2019.

Now, in a separate report by the DOH under Health Secretary Francisco Duque based on a DOH research (http://cnnphilippines.com/news/2019/02/11/doh-measles-cases-update.html), we can see that the real reason behind the fear of many parents to have their children vaccinated is not Atty. Persida Rueda Acosta’s attack against Dengvaxia, but the Dengvaxia scandal itself that led to the death of several children who were injected with Dengvaxia in 2014.