Sanofi rejects refund demand, faces Philippine suit over vaccine
manila — French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi on Monday rejected a Philippine government demand to return tens of millions of dollars paid for a dengue vaccine after the programme was suspended over health concerns.
The Philippines had asked Sanofi to refund 3.2 billion pesos ($62 million) spent on injecting more than 830,000 schoolchildren with Dengvaxia after the company said last year the vaccine could worsen symptoms in some cases.
Sanofi last month agreed to reimburse the Philippine government half the total sought, for leftover doses of Dengvaxia. But it said on Monday it would not pay for doses that were already used.
“Agreeing to refund the used doses of Dengvaxia would imply that the vaccine is ineffective, which is not the case,” Sanofi Pasteur said.
The refund offered for unused Dengvaxia doses was not due to safety or quality concerns but simply to show that the company was cooperating with Manila, the French pharmaceutical giant added.
Dengue or haemorrhagic fever, the world’s most common mosquitoborne virus, infects an estimated 390 million people in more than 120 countries each year and kills more than 25,000 of them, according to the World Health Organisation.
The Philippines has one of the world’s highest dengue fatality rates with 732 deaths last year, the country’s health department said.
The country launched the world’s first dengue vaccination programme in 2016. It was halted last year, along with Dengvaxia sales, after Sanofi warned the injections could make symptoms worse for people who contracted the disease for the first time after being injected.
The announcement caused panic among parents of injected children, said the government, which has since began investigating Dengvaxia’s alleged role in the deaths of at least 14 vaccinated children. Sanofi denies responsibility. Health officials also said immunisation programmes for other preventable diseases were suffering, with many parents now wary of vaccines in general.
On Monday Sanofi rejected a separate health department request to set up an indemnification fund to cover the hospitalisation and treatment for vaccinated children who contract severe dengue.
“Should there be any case of injury due to dengue that has been demonstrated by credible scientific evidence to be causally related to vaccination, we will assume responsibility,” it said. —