FORMER Health secretary Janette Garin on Friday admitted to meeting with officials of French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi Pasteur in Paris in 2015 to discuss the controversial dengue vaccine.
However, Garin told ABS-CBN in a television interview there was no malice in meeting with the makers of the Dengvaxia vaccine, and that she did not fly to Paris just to dine with Sanofi executives.
“That’s right, I really made a mistake because I was being asked on a dinner that happened two years ago,” she told ABS-CBN’s Henry Omaga Diaz in an exclusive interview.
Garin reasoned that if there was malice in meeting the drug firm’s officials, “why was I with officials of the DFA [Department of Foreign Affairs]? Our initial intention was to ask if the vaccine was coming out, when, and how much would it cost?”
Meanwhile, Former President Benigno Aquino III and Garin—his Health secretary at the time—should come out and answer questions about the P3.5-billion deal to buy a dengue vaccine from Sanofi, that has put more than 700,000 school-age children at risk, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said Friday.
“It’s really up to them if they would like to clarify several issues on the matter because they were the ones who made the very vital decision to procure the vaccines,” Duque said in a Palace news briefing Friday.
Garin was reacting to an ABS-CBN report on dining with Sanofi officials, which she initially denied and which raised questions on ethics and the propriety of such a meeting. She told the TV news outlet in May that she only met with the French health minister.
Asked by ABS-CBN whether she discussed the pricing of the vaccine with Sanofi, Garin nodded, saying talks on the vaccine and its price began as early as 2010.
“But if I’m hiding anything, I will not do it in the presence of DFA. We know that it’s a transparent [process],” added the former health chief, who also confirmed she suggested bringing in the private sector to launch the vaccine in the Philippines.
The country cleared the use of Dengvaxia during Garin’s term as health chief in December 2015. The Aquino government spent P3.5 billion to purchase the vaccine for one million public school children in regions reported to have the highest incidence of dengue in 2015.
Earlier, Duque said he had no doubt that Aquino and Garin meant well when they ordered P3.5 billion worth of the new Dengvaxia vaccine from Sanofi, but said he would await the results of an investigation on the controversial deal.
He also gave Garin the benefit of the doubt when reports said she flew to the French capital to meet with top Sanofi officials.
“Well, I heard that, too. But it’s hard to second-guess the former secretary of Health and also the former President,” he said.
On Thursday, Duque said the government will sue Sanofi-Pasteur after suspending a massive immunization program amid questions of the drug’s safety and efficacy.
The French pharmaceutical giant warned on Nov. 29 that new clinical analysis has found Dengvaxia is effective for people who have had dengue prior to immunization, but carried a risk of a “severe” case of dengue for people who have not.
Shortly afterward, the Health department suspended a large-scale immunization program that had already given the vaccine to 700,000 people aged nine to 45.
The Philippines became the first Asian country to approve the vaccine in December 2015, and the Aquino administration approved the inoculation program in just four months, when such projects usually take up to two years to approve.
Duque, who was appointed by President Rodrigo Duterte as Health secretary in November, admitted that up until now, the Health department didn’t know exactly how the purchase was funded, since the money did not come from the DoH budget.
“I think it was funded originally…from the proceeds collected from the sin taxes,” he said, referring to taxes on liquor and tobacco.
Duque said that what he knew was that “there was an instruction” to the state-run PCMC (Philippine Children’s Medical Center) to purchase the vaccine for the nationwide implementation of vaccination program.
“It’s not [from the] PCMC budget. It’s a budget that was given to PCMC because the instruction was for it to do the procurement,” he said.
While Sanofi’s Dengvaxia is the first approved vaccine for dengue, scientists found it did not protect equally against the four different types of the virus in clinical tests.
While Sanofi and other Health officials had repeatedly insisted that the symptoms were limited to grades one and two classification of the World Health Organization, Duque said the pharmaceutical giant could had glossed over grades three and four, which could have fatal symptoms.
“We have to be prudent here. And we have to… be as accurate as we can possibly be,” he said.
Duque also suggested that Sanofi may not have disclosed that there was still a pending study on Dengvaxia before selling it to the Philippines.
Duque said the government would demand a full refund of the P3.5 billion paid for the vaccine.
In addition, the DoH will demand Sanofi cover the hospitalization of those who will contract severe dengue as a result of taking the vaccine.
“We will demand the refund of the P3.5 billion paid for the Dengvaxia, and that Sanofi set up an indemnification fund to cover the hospitalization and medical treatment for all children who might have severe dengue,” Duque said.
He said the government would return the almost 800,000 unused vaccines after the program was suspended.
He added that the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. is ready to cover expenses of up to P16,000 for any child who may be hospitalized for severe dengue.
“We will continue to be vigilant in monitoring our children for any adverse event following immunization, and will strengthen the readiness of our public hospitals in attending to any severe dengue cases that may occur,” the Health chief said.
He also said the Health department has created a task force to review and manage concerns related to the school-based immunization program.
The task force, composed of officials from the DoH, the Food and Drug Administration, PhilHealth and the National Children’s Hospital, will also have a legal team to look into the accountability of Sanofi Pasteur, the company that made and marketed Dengvaxia with a claim that the vaccine was safe and effective for all individuals aged nine to 45 years old.
Duque’s predecessor, former Health secretary Paulyn Jean Rosell Ubial, said she had objected to the implementation of the dengue vaccination program during the Congress budget hearing for the DoH in December 2016 but told GMA News that she was “bullied” by some lawmakers.
Ubial said she found the vaccination program expensive.
In a statement Wednesday, Sanofi said persons not previously infected by dengue before receiving the vaccine fully recovered after suffering “prolonged high fever.”
Sanofi maintained that Dengvaxia was beneficial in countries where dengue is widespread, but proposed that national health regulators “amend the label for the vaccine to target use in people with prior dengue infection.”
The company also stood by its claim that the World Health Organization supported the vaccine’s use in highly endemic countries, even though the Philippine program was approved a week before the agency’s experts released their preliminary findings.
WHO also denied recommending the use of Dengvaxia for national immunization programs.