FORMER Health Secretary Janette Garin on Monday defended her decision to implement a dengue vaccination program because she said dengue had become one of the most prevalent killer diseases in the country.
“To my fellow doctors who are here involved in this misinformation [campaign] on the dengue vaccine, for every dengue death that could have been prevented by the vaccine, you are to blame for it,” Garin told a congressional hearing.
She said the government rejected a similar rotavirus vaccination program in the past due to “wrong information on its safety.”
“What happened? We had outbreaks of diarrhea due to rotavirus in Zamboanga and Samar where babies died from a disease that could be prevented by a vaccine,” Garin said.
She denounced the alleged disinformation campaign against the P3.2-billion nationwide anti-dengue vaccination program allegedly being orchestrated by some doctors.
Garin attended the congressional probe conducted by the House committee on health led by Quezon Rep. Angelina Tan on the alleged irregularities and corruption in the implementation of the program and the massive purchase of Dengvaxia from Sanofi of France.
Garin attended the hearing with Kenneth Hartigan-Go, a doctor and former director of the Food and Drugs Administration and Hilton Lam of the Formulary Executive Council and also a doctor.
Garin was apparently referring to the group of medical professionals led by Anthony Leachon, a doctor who questioned the efficacy as well as the process by which the previous administration pursued the Sanofi anti-dengue product on a national scale.
Leachon and certain members of the Philippine College of Physicians said the purchase process for the vaccine was rushed.
During the hearing, a Bataan father testified that his 10-year-old daughter died four days after falling ill to dengue fever last October.
Health department experts have vowed to look into the case of Christine although they noted that the incident could not be considered as evidence to point out a weakness of Dengvaxia.