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Paper short abstract

What happens to vaccinations in a time of more frequent and destructive climate disasters, and in places that bear the brunt of such disasters? To answer this question, I draw from my ethnography on vaccinations in the Philippines in the aftermath of the COVID-19 global public health emergency.

Paper long abstract

What happens to vaccinations in a time of more frequent and destructive climate disasters, and in places that bear the brunt of such disasters? I attend to this question by drawing from my ongoing ethnography at a district health center in urban Philippines, studying how vaccinations are now being perceived, understood, and imagined in the aftermath of the COVID-19 global public health emergency. I situate vaccinations as both practice (i.e., a 'common good' propagated through the contemporary dominance of Western biomedicine) and as program (i.e., a biotechnological intervention instituted by states and health authorities worldwide) within the continuing narrative of climate change in the country. I cite particular cases when natural disasters have impeded the implementation of my ethnographic site's vaccination program, and use these instances to reflect on the effects these disasters have not only on vaccinations per se, but on the broader infrastructure of health in Philippine society and beyond. Ongoing conversations on planetary health, I argue, would be wise to include health interventions like vaccinations in the picture, especially when such interventions are heavily--yet not-so-overtly--impacted by climate disasters--and are crucial to the large-scale prevention of many existing diseases and the emergence of future epidemics.