Dengvaxia: Another Aquino administration mess

“The analysis confirmed that Dengvaxia provides persistent protective benefit against dengue fever in those who had prior infection. For those not previously infected by dengue virus, however, the analysis found that in the longer term, more cases of severe disease could occur following vaccination upon a subsequent dengue infection.” – Part of Sanofi Pasteur’s statement on new analysis of long-term use of Dengvaxia.

Alarming is rather an understatement. And at this point, I am more than appalled at what has just happened to over 700,000 schoolchildren who received the Dengvaxia vaccine back in 2016. What was supposed to be a new hope for our younger generation against the deadly dengue fever has become the very same nightmare that is putting them at risk to the same disease. What’s worse, they may even contract more severe dengue due to having received the vaccine.

I just cannot bear to think of how their parents would deal with such ordeal, knowing that this is an impending tragedy that may take place at the dead of the night.

It was back in 2016 when the previous administration pushed for an all-out anti-dengue drive through a P3.6-billion worth of Dengvaxia purchased from the French pharma giant, Sanofi Pasteur. I must say it was a hodgepodge decision, as little time was spent to study and prove that the product is worth its price. Indeed, it was recommended by the World Health Organization as an effective prevention against the dreaded disease, but other studies also highlighted its side effects, many of which are detrimental to pediatric health. These latter studies, unfortunately, were brushed aside in order to proceed with the school-based vaccinations that targeted over 700,000 children. Back then, the Department of Health said that through this vaccine, children would be safe for a certain period of time. However, there is no certainty as to what may happen after this period expires.

Now that this mess has surfaced, those responsible should hence be held accountable.

This is not the time to take sides, as lives of innocent children are already at stake. It is now our moral obligation, as Filipinos, as a nation, to take steps to find out what led the previous administration to implement this P3.5-billion immunization program, which appears to have been decided out of whim. To me, it is clear that DOH officials during the previous administration should be held accountable for this fiasco, because for an administration that repeatedly claimed that the people are their boss, they clearly did not take care and caution toward Dengvaxia and the dangers that it could pose to its recipients. Indeed, they may have acted under the best intentions, but this is one best intention that could have been carried out with utter prudence. But they did so otherwise and made the wrong call.

In an article written by RJ Nieto, aka Thinking Pinoy, several things were put to light regarding Dengvaxia and how the previous administration ignored the warnings of different health experts. Then DOH Secretary Janette Garin’s interview with Karen Davila where she claimed that Dengvaxia is recommended for people from 9 to 45 years old even without the WHO guidelines. Also in the same article, Nieto enumerated the red flags that were ignored by the previous administration. This includes one of the WHO guidelines, which explicitly states that “current data suggest substantially lower benefit of vaccination in seronegative individuals 9-45 years of age. There is a theoretical possibility that vaccination could do harm in this population.”

In essence, WHO already warned that Dengvaxia could be dangerous to those who never had dengue; this could have been used to argue that it should not be administered to everyone, and yet the previous administration continued their program without filtering the children and limiting it only to those who previously had dengue.

Nieto cited many other Dengvaxia red flags, which is why if there would be a Senate hearing on this, it must be asked why these warnings were not taken seriously, and why it was not ensured that children with no history of dengue won’t be part of the vaccination program, given that Dengvaxia was not proven to be 100 percent safe for everyone.

Apart from holding those responsible for this mess accountable, I must also point out that we need not only dwell on this mistake. Rather, we must also focus on what needs to be done for the children who are in danger of possibly suffering “severe forms” of dengue.

And just like what the current administration is doing now in the several mess of the previous administration (i.e. Yolanda housing, MRT, SAF44,) we can be sure that President Duterte himself and his administration will not rest until they get justice for the hundreds of thousands of lives that were put at risk while at the same time looking for a plan on what can be done to ensure the safety of these young Filipinos.