Sanofi urged to put up indemnity fund

French pharmaceutical company Sanofi Pasteur, the manufacturer of Dengvaxia, must put up an indemnity fund to help the families of children who received the controversial anti-dengue vaccine, an administration lawmaker said yesterday.

Surigao del Sur Rep. Johnny Pimentel made the suggestion as the House committee on good government and public accountability reopens today its inquiry on the vaccine mess amid reports of mounting cases of Dengvaxia-related hospitalization and possible deaths. House senior deputy minority leader

Lito Atienza of Buhay partylist filed a new resolution enabling the reopening of the inquiry.

“It is high time for Sanofi to comply with Health Secretary Francisco Duque’s request for an indemnity fund to pay for the treatment of Filipino school children rendered sick after receiving Dengvaxia shots,” said Pimentel, chair of the House on good government and public accountability.

“This will be our first hearing since Sanofi released the negative findings of its longterm, follow-up study which showed that children who never had dengue but were given shots had an increased risk of a severe case and hospitalization from the third year after immunization,” he said.

Pimentel earlier warned that officials found liable for the purchase of Dengvaxia would face graft charges for a transaction “that may be deemed manifestly and grossly disadvantageous to the government.”

He said graft charges may be warranted against the officials involved even if they did not make any money for themselves from the transaction.

“Under the law, officials may be held accountable for corrupt and unlawful acts, such as entering into highly injurious purchase contracts, without any need to establish that they profited from the transaction,” he added.

The previous administration only took six months to purchase Dengvaxia for P3.5 billion.

“This is the fastest procurement in Department of Health (DOH)’s history,” Oriental Mindoro Rep. Doy Leachon told health officials and execu- tives of Sanofi in the previous joint hearing of the committees on good government and health.

Meanwhile, the Senate Blue Ribbon committee has subpoenaed documents that could further strengthen the case against Sanofi but which a DOH official tried to conceal, Sen. Richard Gordon said yesterday.

The documents are expected to be examined tomorrow when the Senate committee chaired by Gordon resumes its hearing on the Dengvaxia program implemented on more than 830,000 people, mostly schoolchildren, in 2016.

The Senate inquiry is jointly conducted with the committee on health, chaired by Sen. Joseph Victor Ejercito.

“We discovered that documents that were being hidden by an official of the DOH that indicated Sanofi was not reporting properly to the DOH,” Gordon told dzBB.

Gordon declined to give details but said the documents included a memo that showed Sanofi was supposed to give reports on the conclusion of the various stages of testing of Dengvaxia – from phase one to three – in the country before the vaccine could be considered for purchase by the government.

Phase three was concluded only in September 2017 or more than a year after the DOH purchased three million doses of Dengvaxia for injection to schoolchildren in Metro Manila, Central Luzon, Southern Tagalog regions and some parts of the Visayas.

Gordon said Duque was aware of what the DOH official – whom Gordon refused to name – did and asked him to fix up the matter.

“He’s (Duque) disappointed because I think he was a protégé of his,” Gordon said in a separate telephone interview.

Gordon bared that the of- ficial has a reputation of being “obnoxious” and has been with the DOH since it was headed by former health secretary Janet Garin.

The official was also guilty of “material concealment” in a Senate investigation even as the Department of Justice (DOJ) conducted a separate probe.

PAO warned

Gordon and Ejercito also supported calls from the group Doctors for Public Welfare, led by former health secretary Esperanza Cabral and vaccine expert Lulu Bravo, for the Public Attorney’s Office (PAO) to end its autopsies on children inoculated with Dengvaxia.

The group of doctors asked the DOJ to stop the PAO from performing autopsies and to leave the examination to “competent experts.”

Gordon said while the PAO investigation “may help” and “add to the facts,” it was not going to be conclusive given its limitations.

Ejercito commended the PAO for doing its job but said that based on the ongoing inquiry, it appeared the experts from the University of the Philippines-Philippine General Hospital (UP-PGH) were better equipped and knowledgeable.

Ejercito also expressed concern over reports that the PAO has refused to share its findings with the UP-PGH panel.

He warned conflicting assessments could weaken the case against Sanofi and former government officials.

“We all must be calm and listen to the experts. The UP-PGH has the expertise, the pathologists are there… if we do this (prosecute) in haste, we could have problems,” Ejercito said.

The PAO yesterday defended the conduct of its forensic examinations on the bodies of children who received the antidengue vaccine Dengvaxia.