Muddling the Dengvaxia issue
LAST week’s decision of Europe’s drug regulator to recommend approval for the Dengvaxia anti-dengue vaccine has been taken by defenders of the previous administration as some sort of an exoneration of its schoolchildren with the controversial vaccine in 2016. Nothing can be farther from the truth.
But it has also been established that
Dengvaxia works best for people who had previously contracted the mosquito- borne dengue virus.
Sanofi Pasteur itself announced in November last year that recipients of the Dengvaxia vaccine who had no prior history of dengue infection were at risk of more serious illness, and agreed to reimburse unused vials worth over P1 billion.
This was precisely the reason the Philippine Department of
Health pulled the vaccines from the market and ordered a stop to the P3.5- billion mass inoculation program.
In fact, the World Health Organization (WHO) said early this year there should be a “much safer way” of adminis
The WHO also called for a faster way of testing potential vaccines on people who may or may not have contracted the dengue virus previously.
The main contention in the Dengvaxia controversy is that the vaccine was administered on 800,000 schoolage children beginning 2016 without determining their “serostatus” or dengue infection history.
Therefore, potentially hundreds of thousands of children with no history of dengue infection have been exposed to significantly higher health risks.
Another line of argument being pursued by supporters of the previous administration is that the 2016 mass inoculation program was conceived out of good faith, and was meant to help families, especially the poor, fight the virus, which infects 96 million people annually all over the world.
The argument can actually be reversed: the authors of this grossly irresponsible mass vaccination campaign should be held liable for using the poor, who were more than willing to take free healthcare services they could hardly afford, as an excuse to drive up the sales of the vaccine.
What’s worse was that the families and their children did not know about the risks of the vaccine on people with no history of dengue.
All these nonsensical arguments on the culpability of the previous administration over the Dengvaxia mess should be put to rest given the fact that cases against former health officials led by Janette Garin have been filed before the courts.
Those who try to make the truth more complicated have serious problems accepting the plain facts, even if these facts are staring at them right in the face.
At this stage, the efficacy of Dengvaxia, a product of French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi Pasteur, is no longer in doubt. But it has also been established that Dengvaxia works best for people who had previously contracted the mosquito-borne dengue virus.