Probe vaccine flap with eye on corruption

The government is in a frenzy trying to respond to the disclosure by pharmaceutical giant Sanofi Pasteur that its Dengvaxia vaccine, already administered by the Department of Health to nearly 800,000 people as part of a pilot anti-dengue program, actually poses risks to those who have never been exposed to dengue at all. It is in a frenzy because about half that number never had dengue and are therefore the object of Sanofi's concern.

Helping to feed the frenzy are a lot of misinformed media practitioners who swiftly picked up the issue without fully getting the facts. It is incorrect to say that a person who has never had dengue and has been administered the controversial anti-dengue vaccine will now be at risk from all sorts of diseases. What Sanofi said was that, for these people, if and when they do suffer from dengue, their cases will be more severe than if they already had the disease previously.

In other words, it is still dengue that will be the problem, not some other diseases. That aside, it is small comfort to hear Sanofi say there has not been any fatality recorded among the negatives (those who never had dengue) who got the vaccine. The fact that instead of being rendered immune, or at least safely prepared to withstand the disease, this vaccine swings in the opposite direction; makes the issue truly catastrophic for man and medicine.

But while it is best to leave the medicine side to experts, government might want to take a closer look at the human side, that part of the issue involving humans. More specifically, government might want to determine whether or not human corruption had anything to do with the fiasco. The fact that, of the roughly 200 countries in the world, the Philippines just had to be among the first few to use the new vaccine on a massive scale makes the issue more interesting.

And while the investigators (and there are many of them) are at it, they might also want to look at past records of the Department of Health in administering its various mass inoculation programs. There was, for instance, a mass anti-cervical cancer vaccination that targeted, of all people, very young girls, specifically those of Grade 4 age. Why of Grade 4 age? Because the DOH "PRESUMED" this was the age when girls "COULD" start sexual contacts. Really?

That the DOH used the words "presume" and "could" suggests it was not exactly sure. And yet it went ahead with a mass vaccination of girls on nothing stronger than a presumption. And the only way humans can be motivated enough to engage in dangerous presumptions, even at the risk of taking liberties with a great number of human lives, is if there is something in it for them. A nononsense investigation is therefore in order, with special emphasis on the possibility of corruption.