‘Marawi attackers set sights on 2nd city’

Islamic State (IS) group-linked militants planned but failed to attack another southern Philippine city shortly after troops crushed their siege of Marawi last year, the leader of the country’s largest Muslim rebel group said yesterday.

Al Haj Murad Ebrahim of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front said the plot to attack either Iligan or Cotabato city fell apart after the Marawi siege ended, but the extremists have continued to recruit new fighters to recover from their

are expected to arrive midMarch from Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, United States and United Kingdom.

They are composed of epidemiologists, dengue experts, infectious disease experts, pathologists and other specialists.

“I already received the terms of reference on our consultancy with the WHO and they identified several experts who will come here. We are just finalizing the rates (of the consultants),” he said in an interview.

Domingo noted the WHO is paying for the mission that will assist the DOH in “building the capacity” of local health experts looking into the mess created by Dengvaxia.

The DOH had decided to seek guidance from the WHO as more cases of dengue among the vaccinated children are expected to surface in the coming years.

He added the foreign experts could not stay for an extended period so they will just help boost the country’s capacity to assess adverse events related to the dengue vaccination program.

The foreign team will look into how their local counterparts have been evaluating adverse events and then do capacity building.

“So what we really want is to set up a system. They will enable a local team to be able to continue doing the analysis and evaluation of cases in the next years,” he said.

The DOH currently has two teams monitoring and evaluating the impact of Dengvaxia on vaccinated children.

These are the DOH Task Force that is looking at adverse events following Dengvaxia immunization, and the expert panel of the University of the Philippines-Philippine General Hospital, which is investigating deaths related to the vaccine.

Domingo added among the things the foreign and local experts are expected to do is to formulate guidelines on adverse events that are tailor fit for Dengvaxia vaccination.

Aside from the 14 vaccinated children whose deaths were investigated by the UP-PGH panel, there are 17 other deaths documented by the DOH.

Under the plan, the investigation into the 17 deaths and others that might follow will be done by local teams based on enhanced guidelines.

Transparency

In a related development, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III has ordered all officials, employees, hired experts and consultants of the department to disclose and manage conflict of interest amid the Dengvaxia fiasco.

In Department Memorandum No. 2018-0060 dated Feb. 19, Duque said everyone must comply with “Guidelines on the Disclosure and Management of Conflicts of Interest in relation to the use of pharmaceutical products and medical devices.”

Duque said the move is in line with “the national government’s thrust to promote transparency and good governance and… to prevent corrupt practices by public and private officials and officers.”

“I have instructed all personnel, including consultants and resource speakers, to strictly abide by the DOH rules on the management of any potential conflicts of interest,” he noted in a statement.

The memorandum stated that “it is the duty of the DOH to uphold the integrity of its vital process, particularly with regard to crafting technical recommendations and decisions concerning the purchase, procurement, deployment and use of pharmaceutical products and medical devices to ensure that they work in the best interest of Filipino patients.”