Manila vows to protect Pfizer over complaints
MANILA: A senior Malacanang Palace official on Wednesday disclosed the government has assured US drugmaker Pfizer of protection against possible complaints especially of adverse side effects in the use of its vaccine against the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
Carlito Galvez, appointed by President Duterte as the “vaccine czar,” said the government assurance was contained in an indemnification agreement it had sent to Pfizer which was to provide an initial supply of 117,000 doses of its ANTI-COVID-19 vaccine in February.
Galvez, a retired military general, said Pfizer demanded the agreement so it would not suffer the same fate as that of Sanofi Pasteur, the French pharmaceutical giant and manufacturer of Dengvaxia, a vaccine against the the mosquito borne disease dengue. “Pfizer wants the assurance because they found out about the lawsuits that surrounded the use of Dengvaxia,” Galvez told an online media briefing.
“We explained and assured them (Pfizer) it will not happen as much as possible.”
He explained that under the agreement, the Philippine government would assume full responsibility and would indemnify the victims in case of complaints of possible side effects arising from the use of the Pfizer vaccine in its nationwide inoculation programme against the virus.
“All drug manufacturers, especially Western manufacturers,” Galvez said, “they need a guarantee from suit. The government guaranteed it will be our responsibility if there are severe adverse effects (from the use of their vaccines).”
Moreover, there is a big difference in the population targets of the Pfizer vaccine and Dengvaxia, Galvez said.
The Pfizer vaccine, he explained, is aimed at the country’s adult population in which the priority list includes medical frontliners like doctors and nurses as well as senior citizens.
On the other hand, Galvez said the Dengvaxia target consisted of young schoolchildren, about 800,000 of whom were vaccinated in 2016 to protect them from dengue, a mosquito-borne disease common to tropical countries like the Philippines.
The Dengvaxia inoculation programme, however, became controversial following complaints mostly from parents that their children had suffered serious side effects that allegedly led to the death of some of them.
The Senate and the House of Representatives conducted separate investigations that led to recommendations for the filing in court mainly of charges of homicide due to reckless imprudence against government officials especially former president Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino who was, however, spared.