Politics over life
After just one joint Senate hearing on the Dengvaxia controversy, it has now emerged with unprecedented clarity that politics, and in particular the May 2016 presidential elections, may have had something to do with the P3.2 billion anti-dengue mass vaccination fiasco. And that former president Noynoy Aquino may have been at the very center of it.
The anti-dengue mass vaccination campaign started in April 2016, just one month before the contentious presidential election wherein the anointed successor of Noynoy was clearly not in a winning position. And the vaccination campaign was focused on three pilot areas that Senate blue ribon committee chairman Richard Gordon described as vote-rich areas.
But in what way can an anti-dengue vaccination campaign possibly help in an election? Well, anything that is of service to the public always helps. And an anti-dengue vaccination campaign is a public health service. This is precisely the reason why there is a moratorium on all public projects during the election campaign in order to level the playing field as such projects always tend to favor those who are already in office.
Why the anti-dengue mass vaccination campaign was allowed to begin well into the campaign period considering that its very nature undoubtedly makes it a public project is something that should be looked into by those intending to make certain people accountable for their actions. And this particular public project was a huge potential vote-getter as dengue then had no cure and Dengvaxia was the first of its kind. It was a "heaven-sent" gift for which the public can be eternally grateful.
But the mass vaccination campaign failed to stop the inevitable tidal wave of change. A new administration swept in. Worse, Sanofi, the maker of Dengvaxia, came recently with a shocking announcement—that the vaccine posed certain risks to people who have never been exposed to dengue. All hell literally broke loose in the Philippines.
And so, at the joint Senate hearing last Monday, witness after witness, in testimony after testimony, the pieces of the puzzle began to come together and form a picture of wanton political interests prevailing over public safety and health. It appears that there was unconscionable and unwarranted haste to introduce a vaccine whose risks to human beings have not been completely ascertained just so potential political advantage can be gained.
This space is too limited to put out the timeline of events leading from Noynoy's meeting with Sanofi officials and authorizing the realignment of funds for the purchase of Dengvaxia all in December 2015 to the April 2016 roll-out of the mass vaccination campaign. But suffice it to say the events related to the controversy all happened with abnormal haste the kind of which Filipinos do not normally see or expect from their government.
But that is just the probable political angle of it. Gordon himself said he is not closing the door to a potential corruption angle to this fiasco. Wherever this controversy may lead this nation, it must not allow those responsible for putting the lives of nearly a million Filipinos who have been given the vaccine, most of them children, to go unpunished. We can endure stealing and inefficiency in public service. But putting the lives of children in danger is unpardonable.
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