As pols feud, who cares about 830,000 lives?

Dengvaxia has imperiled 830,000 children. Their injection with the dengue vaccine was so haphazard. Unresolved issues hanged while the inoculating was done in 2016-2017. Foremost was that those who previously had not been infected could suffer severe hemorrhagic fever if bitten by the mosquito after injection. And yet the health department had not blood tested the youths for past infections to pinpoint those at risk. It merely concluded from a study in two barrios that nine in ten Filipinos unknowingly already had been bitten. Too the government had not set up a reporting system for the harmful side effect. It simply rushed the immunizing as a campaign gimmick for the 2016 national election. So now some of the “immunized” children could fall ill and die on infection, activist doctor Tony Leachon laments. Who, how many, or when, nobody knows. There’s no fund either to hospitalize them when crunch time comes. They and their families are on their own.

Five deaths have in fact been reported in Central Luzon. A thousand hospitalizations also were counted in that region, and in Metro Manila and Calabarzon. Being thickly populated, those three were the most dengue-prone – and held the most number of voters. Dengvaxia maker Sanofi Pasteur and the DOH quickly had dismissed the deaths as inconclusively related to the vaccine. No autopsy was ever done for that purpose, they alibied. Unmentioned was that, precisely for lack of autopsy, it is equally inconclusive that Dengvaxia had nothing to do with the deaths.

Politics had ruled the immunization from the start. Photographs show that then-President Noynoy Aquino had met with Sanofi execs in Beijing and Paris while the vaccine was still being tested in 2014. Soon afterwards, ambassadorial notes of another meeting show, then-health secretary Janette Garin asked the company’s French bosses for a price quotation. It is highly unusual for the President or health minister of any country to meet with pharmaceutical vendors. The Dengvaxia brand name had not even been coined then. Garin now disavows any malice in her actions.

Fund shenanigans also marked the vaccinations. To begin with, there was no proper budget allocation for it from Congress. Dengvaxia was not even listed in the official Formulary of drugs that government may purchase. But the Jan.-June 2016 election ban on new government spending fast was approaching. So in Dec. 2015 the DOH’s Bureau of Food and Drugs was made to license the vaccine for sale locally. Within a week Malacañang ordered the Budget department to release P3.5 billion for three million injections. The money was coursed through the small Philippine Children’s Medical Center, whose budget for that year was only P1.6 billion. The P3.5 billion for dengue alone was even larger than the P3 billion for a dozen other vaccines against more prevalent diseases: mumps, measles, small pox, polio, pneumonia, influenza, etc.

The first of three injections, six months apart, began in Apr. 2016, a month before Election Day. Derogatory news about Sanofi were swirling then in America, Europe, and Africa, said Sen. Richard Gordon. The giant pharma was being criminally prosecuted and fined hundreds of millions of dollars for bribery.

The politicking and government fund juggling continued under the Duterte administration. Garin’s DOH successor Paulyn Ubial in July 2016 at first stopped the vile inoculation. Two months later, under pressure from super-majority congressmen, she ordered its resumption. Despite the absence of implementing budgets, the politicos even forced her to include Central Visayas in the second wave of injections that month. Thus was increased the number of imperiled lives.

Politicking goes on in the midst of a national outcry. Malacañang aides and congressmen are blaming solely the past Aquino tenure for the mess to hide their own roles. Influential law firms are shielding clients from exposure in congressional inquiries and consequent prosecution. Lobby money is flowing to divert the attention of investigators and the media. As for the 830,000 victimized children, there is yet no effort to check them for any symptoms of hemorrhagic fever. There is still no emergency fund for their care in case of imminent infection. There is no long-term plan to recompense them for the potentially life-long sufferings they will undergo.

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