The Department of Health (DOH) is set to form an independent panel of experts this week to review the latest results on the controversial Dengue vaccine.
In a statement on Tuesday, DOH Secretary Francisco Duque III said the latest discovery of the World Health Organization (WHO) on the dengue vaccine prompted the review. He added that the DOH is now eyeing the main concerns of parents, teachers as well as local government units stemming from the administration of the dengue vaccine to at least 830,000 public school students in Metro Manila, Central Luzon, and Calabarzon who had been vaccinated under the government’s dengue immunization program.
“The DOH continues to refine our response and action plan in the Dengue Task Force to ensure the safety and best health outcomes for children who were vaccinated through heightened monitoring and surveillance, effective management of adverse events following immunization, activation of the dengue fast lanes in public hospitals, and truthful and timely risk communication to the public,” Duque said.
The panel of experts will review the latest evidence on Dengvaxia which came from the five-year observation period in clinical trials conducted by the French pharmaceutical company Sanofi Pasteur, post-marketing surveillance of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the surveillance of adverse events following immunization (AEFI) at the DOH Epidemiology Bureau.
Earlier, the DOH and the Philippine General Hospital have also partnered to perform an independent review of medical charts of students who might have underwent serious adverse events or died after the immunization program to determine probable cause or whether the reactions are connected to the vaccination.
“Based on the latest update from the WHO, the five-year follow up data provides evidence of reduced risk of severe dengue and hospitalization overall among vaccinated trial participants but also confirmed an earlier hypothesis that those vaccinated with no prior dengue infection could be at higher risk of more severe dengue and hospitalizations. This risk persisted about five years after the first dose,” the Health secretary explained.
The dengue vaccination program, which was launched during the Aquino administration, has been called off after Sanofi Pasteur admitted that its vaccine could lead to severe dengue if administered to a person who had not been infected by the virus.
The Department of Justice (DOJ), for its part, is set to conduct its own investigation into this issue. Duque also called on all concerned sectors to permit the investigating bodies to perform their jobs without being subject to criticism, censure, and accusations carried out of groundless speculation and suspicion.
Duque also said that the department will submit all documents needed by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) on Wednesday.
“We leave it to the appropriate courts to conduct their own independent investigation and to determine whether all the legal requirements were satisfactorily met in the purchase of the Dengvaxia vaccine,” Duque stressed.
The Health secretary assured that the DOH is “heavily immersed” in efforts to public concerns on the dengue vaccine and in determining the proper cause of action to take in managing the all-inclusive situation.
“We shall also put in place the necessary measures to ensure the observance of proper procedures in the introduction of new vaccines into our public health programs,” he added.