DOH demands refund, sero testing aid from Sanofi Pasteur

The Department of Health (DOH) demanded that vaccine manufacturer Sanofi Pasteur refund the P1.4 billion-worth of unused vials of the dengue vaccine Dengvaxia.

In a statement on Friday, the DOH also declared in the letters to Thomas Triomphe, head of Sanofi Pasteur Asia Pacific, that it asked the company to shoulder the costs of sero testing of more than 830,000 students inoculated with the vaccine.

“The Dengvaxia vaccine which Sanofi Pasteur aggressively promoted and sold to the Philippine Government has undeniably failed to deliver its supposed clinical benefit and safety claims, hence, considered defective under Philippine civil laws,” Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said.

Sanofi Pasteur has yet to respond to their queries.

The DOH, in December, said it will eventually sue the company for the vaccine that was revealed to pose great risk to individuals that have yet to contract dengue prior to vaccination with Dengvaxia.

Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has already suspended Dengvaxia's certificate of product registration and fined the company P100,000.

According to the Dengue Surveillance Update by the Epidemiology Bureau on January 10, 2018, four of the 17 cases "being looked into identify dengue shock as cause of death."

The independent panel of experts from the Philippine General Hospital (PGH) tapped by the DOH to investigate the cases has yet to conclude whether Dengvaxia had a role in the deaths.

http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/news/nation/638702/panel-to-review-deaths-of-14-kids-given-dengvaxia-doh/story/

“We cannot answer that as of now because our experts are still studying the clinical records,” Duque explained.

Duque also welcomed the separate investigations conducted by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Public Attorney’s Office (PAO) into the vaccination program.

“We welcome these investigations as complementary to our efforts in finding the truth about this matter,” Duque said.

The PAO is exhuming the bodies of several students who died of dengue some time after they received Dengvaxia as part of their investigation.

PAO plans to file criminal, civil and administrative charges in February over the Dengvaxia situation. — BAP, GMA News