The Department of Justice on Wednesday received the 12th complaint seeking to prosecute former Health secretary Janette Garin and 36 others over the deaths of schoolchildren inoculated with the controversial Dengvaxia vaccine.
With the assistance from the Public Attorney’s Office, the family of John Paul Rafael, 11-year-old student from Bagac, Bataan who died in April 2016 after being inoculated with the anti-dengue vaccine filed a complaint for reckless imprudence resulting in homicide under the Revised Penal Code and violations of Anti-Torture Act and Consumer Act against the former Health officials led by Garin and executives of manufacturer Sanofi Pasteur Inc. and distributor Zuellig Pharma Corp.
The complaint was filed by Rafael’s uncle and aunt, spouses Manuel and Kristina Ramirez with the help of PAO, which was tasked by the DoJ to conduct a fact-finding investigation and case buildup on the Dengvaxia controversy.
As in the previous cases, the latest complaint accused Garin and others of negligence through “arbitrarily, maliciously, and deliberately failure to inform the Dengvaxia recipients and their parents/families of the dangers and risks related to Dengvaxia and to obtain their informed consent.”
The complainant also cited the failure of the DoH under Garin to conduct proper screening of Dengvaxia recipients and to implement active and aggressive monitoring and surveillance over the recipients considering the risks posed by the vaccine to seronegative recipients or those who had no history of dengue.
“Simply put, based on the admissions and declarations of respondent Sanofi Pasteur, Inc., if Dengvaxia is administered to a person who has not yet contracted dengue, that person will have a greater risk of developing severe disease, which would have been otherwise had Dengvaxia not been administered upon him,” the complaint said.
The respondents “displayed grave recklessness, utter bad faith, lack of foresight, lack of skill, want of care, gross neglect and deliberate, arbitrary and even malicious disregard of the safety and lives of thousands of Filipino children,” it said.
According to the complaint, John Paul was inoculated with the vaccine on March 31, 2016 and started to get sick a few days after.
He died on April 11, 2016 due to congenital heart disease, but forensic examination conducted by PAO showed that John Paul also had “common signs and symptoms of deaths following vaccination of Dengvaxia… including brain hemorrhage and internal bleeding in other organs.”
Meanwhile, parents of children whose deaths were linked to the inoculation of anti-dengue vaccine Dengvaxia insisted before the DoJ panel that the controversial drug caused the untimely demise of their children.
In a reply-affidavit, the parents, complainants behind nine sets of criminal charges against ranking Health officials, disputed Garin’s claim that there was no conclusive connection between the vaccine and the deaths.
“How can she say that the Dengvaxia vaccine is safe for humans when our children who were once healthy children died after receiving the Dengvaxia vaccine?” the complainants assisted by PAO lawyers said.
In seeking dismissal of the charges against her, Garin noted that a causality between the “recklessly imprudent acts” and the material damage has not been established.
“The absence of the dengue viral material in the patient’s body absolutely eliminates any possible relation between dengue vaccine and the patient,” Garin said in her counter-affidavit filed earlier.
The PAO insisted on the criminal charges filed against Garin and other respondents over the deaths of first nine complainant—Aejay Bautista, Angelica Pestilos, Lenard Baldonado, Zandro Colite, Abbie Hedia, Jansyn Bataan, Mark Axel Ebonia, Rey Justin Almagno and Alexander Jaime.
The DoJ investigating panel, chaired by Assistant State Prosecutor Maria Emilia Victorio, set the next hearing for Aug. 30 for the filing of rejoinder by the respondents before submitting the case for resolution.