DOH probes deaths of 5 more kids

The Department of Health (DOH) is probing five new cases of children suspected to have died after being given the Dengvaxia antidengue vaccine, a health official said Tuesday.

“We’re still retrieving the actual records of the patients,” Health Undersecretary Enrique Domingo said, adding that the agency was coordinating with several hospitals to do this.

“Once we’ve completed the records of these five patients, we will study (if they were Dengvaxia recipients),” the official said.

Earlier, a panel of experts from Philippine General Hospital (PGH) was formed to study the clinical charts of 14 children who reportedly died after receiving the antidengue vaccine.

The vaccine’s maker, Sanofi Pasteur, admitted late last year that Dengvaxia may increase the risk of severe dengue among those not previously exposed to the virus.

P1.1 billion

Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said the company had agreed to pay P 1.1 billion to the government for the unused vaccines that it would be retrieving until Friday this week at designated collection points.

The DOH previously demanded a full refund of P3.5 billion that the government had paid for the vaccines.

“The reimbursement (would be given) in about one or two days after retrieval (of the unused vials),” Duque said in a press briefing after DOH officials met with the company on Tuesday afternoon.

The DOH official said there were about 1,187,815 unused vials of the Dengvaxia vaccine, “which is equivalent to P1,187,815,000.”

Duque explained that some local government units were still conducting an inventory of their stocks of the vaccine.

Also discussed in the meeting was the DOH’s request for Sanofi Pasteur to conduct a sero-testing of more than 830,000 children who had received the vaccine to determine if they had previous dengue infections.

“They said that they will send us a letter explaining the testing kit, NS1 Antigen,” Duque said.

Criminal culpability

But presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said that the company’s statement, while welcome, wouldn’t necessarily get it off the hook.

“We highlight that the refund will in no way affect ongoing investigations which will ultimately determine whether or not there is criminal culpability on the part of Sanofi,” Roque said in a press briefing on Tuesday.

In 2015, the Philippines approved the purchase and use of Dengvaxia in areas with high incidences of the potentially fatal, mosquito-borne disease. Some 830,000 children were given the antidengue vaccine in a massive immunization program that continued into the Duterte administration.

Aside from the DOH’s and PGH’s review of the patients’ medical records, the Public Attorney’s Office (PAO) was also conducting separate autopsies on the request of the children’s parents.

The PAO warned that it was seeing a disturbing pattern in its autopsies, and said that it noted a very fast progression of the symptoms of dengue from its onset until the patient died.

In some cases, it took only 12 up to 48 hours for a patient to die of severe bleeding.

The PAO, through its forensics chief Dr. Erwin Erfe, noted that some of the children suffered from symptoms typical of yellow fever and dengue fever.