MANILA, Philippines — Former Department of Health (DOH) secretary Janet Garin has passed the blame to her predecessor, Enrique Ona, for the DOH’s dengue vaccination program using the Dengvaxia vaccine.
“Talks about the vaccine started during the time of secretary Ona. In 2014, I think June or July, he already announced that we would be having the vaccine by 2015. He said the department was contemplating on putting it in the public health program,” she said in an interview with ANC.
But the country was just part of the Dengvaxia clinical trials when he was still DOH secretary, Ona said.
“The studies started during my term but not (the actual program) … Of course there was a plan (to include) it in the program because of our problems with dengue, but that would depend on the outcome of the studies,” he said.
Ona admitted he was surprised at the scope of the school-based vaccination program implemented by DOH, given that Dengvaxia is new.
“The question here is – are you going to implement it that big or will you just identify (a small group to be vaccinated)? The budget is so big, P3.5 billion. It’s bigger than the entire budget of the DOH,” he added.
Ona maintained that the scope of the vaccination program “should have been limited to see what happens” first.
The decision to procure the vaccines from France-based Sanofi Pasteur was not entirely hers but the DOH itself, with guidance from the World Health Organization (WHO), Garin said.
Aside from this, the vaccine also passed through the scrutiny of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) before it was issued a license, she added.
The country’s dengue problem is so severe that it can not be solved simply by eliminating mosquitoes and their breeding sites, Garin said.
“Some 200,000 individuals get infected with dengue every year and these (incur) costs amounting to P16 billion. These are the people who manifest symptoms. Some 75 to 85 percent of others do not show symptoms,” she added.
Garin admitted meeting with Sanofi officials in Paris in 2015 before the DOH procured the vaccines.
However, she said the trip was funded by the European Union and was part of a series of meetings that included a trip to the Netherlands to consult on arsenic contamination in Pampanga and then in Belgium.
There was “no malice” in the trip as its primary purpose was to check on a vaccine facility there, Garin said.
Health Secretary Francisco Duque III has validated reports that a 12-year-old student from Tarlac had contracted dengue after getting three doses of Dengvaxia in March and October 2016 and in August this year.
Duque wants Sanofi to explain the case since based on its disclosures and studies, the vaccine gives “a 30-month protection, more or less, to those who have had no prior dengue infection and had been vaccinated.”
“If you start counting from March 16 to when we found out the case this week, that’s like 20 months, and that’s a far cry from the 30 months they were saying. So this is one thing that I want to ask them about,” he said.
Duque added that this development had put the efficacy of the vaccine in question.
‘No one will be spared’
No one will be spared in the Blue Ribbon committee’s probe into the allegedly anomalous purchase and distribution of Dengvaxia, the hearings of which would resume tomorrow, Sen. Richard Gordon said yesterday.
The hearing of the committee, which is chaired by Gordon, would be the second and would focus initially on the current officials of the DOH, FDA and representatives of Sanofi.
Garin had been invited to the hearing but the committee was told that her father died and she would be unable to attend, Gordon said.
He had advised both Garin and former budget and management secretary Florencio Abad to attend the hearings because the issue concerns both of them as the former heads of the agencies that procured and approved the funding of the anti-dengue vaccination program, respectively.
In the case of former president Benigno Aquino III, Gordon said he is not inclined to invite him to the hearings because of his status. However, Gordon admitted that Aquino’s alleged involvement in the procurement of the vaccine would inevitably come up during the course of the hearings.
As of now, Gordon said the committee has enough circumstantial information linking Aquino, such as his meetings with executives of Sanofi and the circumstances surrounding the realignment of funds to pave the way for the release of P3.5 billion for the vaccines.
It was reported that Aquino met with Sanofi executives twice, the first in Beijing, China in November 2014 and the second in Paris, France in December 2015.
VACC to implicate Noy
A witness is ready to implicate former president Aquino and other government officials in the controversial procurement of Dengvaxia, said a lawyer of Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption (VACC) yesterday.
The said witness will appear before the Senate Blue Ribbon committee tomorrow, said lawyer Ferdinand Topacio.
Topacio did not name the person so as “not to preempt his testimony.”
Aside from Aquino, the VACC witness will also implicate Garin and Abad, Topacio said.
“He will say the reasons why they are implicated and he has documents,” Topacio said in a news forum in Quezon City.
The witness will also implicate others, who are mostly from the DOH, in the controversy.
The witness has been connected with the DOH since 1994, Topacio said. He did not disclose if the person is still working for the department.
“He knows the process although he was not involved,” said Topacio, adding that the witness repeatedly warned officials about procuring the drug which did not reportedly undergo intensive tests for its adverse effects.
Among the irregularities the witness will state is the selection of regions to be covered by the vaccination program that was based on the number of voters in the area, Topacio said.
Group calls out Duque
Duque should also answer for past irregularities linked to him, the Health Alliance for Democracy (HEAD) said.
In a statement posted on a blog-publishing service, HEAD said as PhilHealth president before becoming health secretary under the Arroyo administration, Duque used PhilHealth as a tool for political patronage.
Among the irregularities pointed out by the organization was the alleged distribution to indigents of PhilHealth cards when Arroyo campaigned for the 2004 presidential elections.
The cards bore Arroyo’s picture, HEAD said, and had a one-year validity.
HEAD also questioned the “medical tourism“ campaign during Duque’s tenure, which “offered cheap medical services to foreigners, but none to his poor and ailing countrymen,” said physician Joseph Carabeo, HEAD secretary-general.
Seen as a solution to the country’s brain drain of health professionals, Carabeo claimed that Duque instituted the campaign because “he had no insight that health professionals were leaving because of low wage and appalling work conditions.”
The medical tourism campaign was further used to justify turning into “corporate” entities the National Kidney Transplant Institute and Lung Center of the Philippines, Carabeo said.
These hospitals now charge high prices for admission and services, he said. – With Marvin Sy, Emmanuel Tupas, Jose Rodel Clapano