Garin blames health council  for vaccine wastage

MANILA, Philippines — Saying it was lacking in flexibility, Iloilo Rep. Janette Garin blamed the Health Technology Assessment Council (HTAC) for the wastage of about 31 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines worth P15.6 billion.

It took some time for the body to decide on allowing the use of COVID-19 jabs as first and second booster shots, contributing greatly to vaccine wastage, she explained.

Garin, a former health secretary, noted that HTAC only allowed the administration of second booster to more people when the vaccines were already expiring, thus people were apprehensive in getting them.

“In combatting infectious diseases, vaccination is always effective when you see the face of the infection. You take advantage when many people want to get it. If you miss that window… the adrenalin of the people to get vaccinated is no longer there,” she said in an interview.

HTAC is an independent advisory council created under the Universal Health Care law to provide guidance to the Department of Heath and Philippine Health Insurance Corp. on the coverage of health interventions and technologies to be funded by the government.

For the COVID-19 pandemic, it is HTAC that gives recommendation on which and when to use certain vaccines and medicines and for which population.

According to Garin, the “problem with the HTAC setup” is that it has become “powerful by virtue of the law but it was not flexible.”

“Everything has to go through HTAC… like the vaccines. The private sector was not immediately allowed to use the vaccines that they bought as first and second booster shots,” she said.

She said it appeared to have become a practice of HTAC to wait for results of clinical or laboratory trials even if there are already “real world data” supporting the administration of booster doses.

“If you are in a pandemic, we have what we call ‘real world data’ because many countries have started with their boosters without laboratory data because millions of people are getting infected and dying,” she pointed out, noting that the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had already said the primary series of vaccines was not providing adequate protection.

This, to her, should have already signaled to HTAC to give the “go” to booster dosing.

“What happened was that it was so ‘by the book.’ But, so many things were happening that were not in the book,” Garin said.

The council, she added, was given so much power that DOH had to depend on it while HTAC members are “not full time and have no accountability.”

Garin clarified that she was not pushing for the abolition of HTAC but for clipping its powers.

She explained that decisions on COVID-19 vaccination and treatment protocols should be with DOH, which has “program managers” and experts in certain fields.

“The power of HTAC should be limited to health technology assessment which is actually pricing. They should not meddle with program managers or with the implementation (of programs),” she maintained.