Surigao del Sur Rep. Johnny Pimentel, chair of the House Committee on Good Government and Public Accountabiity (Photo from his Facebook page)
The House of Representatives Committee on Good Government and Public Accountability will hold Sanofi Pasteur liable for allegedly misrepresenting the side effects of Dengvaxia, as the French pharmaceutical giant only recently disclosed the risks months after the congressional inquiry had ended.
“During our hearing, they never disclosed this,” Rep. Johnny Pimentel, committee chair, told radio station dzBB on Sunday.
“We will hold Sanofi accountable for this erroneous representation because during the hearing they said it was safe. But now, it’s another thing,” he said.
The House Committee on Health conducted hearings on the vaccine in November and December last year, months after the Department of Health (DOH) had implemented its dengue immunization program on at least 800,000 children in public schools starting in April.
Pimentel recalled that Sanofi Pasteur representatives testified on the safety of Dengvaxia.
At the time, Sanofi Pasteur’s regional dengue expert, Anh Wartel, downplayed the risks of using the vaccine, saying: “The concerns expressed in the background are based upon ‘what-if’ conjectures.”
It was only last Nov. 29 that Sanofi announced that the vaccine could heighten the risk of hospitalization for persons who had not been exposed to the dengue virus prior to immunization.
Pimentel raised the possibility that Sanofi representatives “deliberately” misled the congressional inquiry or that they were “misinformed.”
He said it was a “blessing in disguise” that the good government and health committees had not come up with a committee report yet – especially since the draft stated that “Dengvaxia is safe to use.”
“If we had rendered the committee report, we could have absolved Sanofi of responsibility because they testified that it was safe to use,” he said.
In a separate statement, Pimentel said the committees’ initial review pointed to “unwarranted haste” in getting Dengvaxia approved for use on Filipino children and adopting an aggressive inoculation program using the world’s first-ever licensed dengue vaccine.
“Many of us in the committee were in fact dumbfounded by the excessive rush to allow the use of the vaccine and to get the program going,” he said. “Questions were raised as to why we had to be the first country in the world to launch in April 2016 a public inoculation plan against dengue, when the DOH could have simply waited for the results of further studies as to the safety and efficacy of Dengvaxia.”
The hearing will be reopened on Wednesday, Dec. 13, although Pimentel said he did not know if former Health Secretary Janette Garin would be able to appear, as she was scheduled to have an operation for her appendicitis. /atm