Surigao del Sur Rep. Johnny Pimentel on Sunday urged the Department of Health to ban pharmaceutical companies from using the agency’s staff for clinical studies and facilities on new vaccines or medicine, particularly those pending regulatory approval.
He warned government officials who moonlight with private firams could be held liable for violation of the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials and Employees.
“This practice of allowing DoH specialists to moonlight and have second jobs with pharmaceutical companies is unethical because it tends to corrupt the department, including the approval of new drug applications,” he said.
Pimentel is the chairman of the House of good government and public accountability committee that recently concluded a joint inquiry with the health panel into the Dengvaxia controversy.
The two panels are now preparing a report on their findings and recommendations to be released this month.
In the course of their inquiry, the panels discovered that Ma. Rosario Capiding, chief of the microbiology department at the DoH’s Research Institute for Tropical Medicine, received P40,000 in monthly compensation from the vaccines division of French multinational pharmaceutical firm Sanofi Pasteur.
Capiding was the principal investigator who conducted the study on Dengvaxia under a grant from Sanofi in 2011. Clinical trials were completed in 2017.
The results of the studies and clinical trials were used to bolster Sanofi’s new drug application for Dengvaxia in the Philippines.
“The RITM and its staff should not be conducting clinical studies and trials for and on behalf of pharmaceutical companies,” Pimentel said.
“The institute should be performing studies on its own on potential new vaccines or pharmaceutical agents. All its activities should be funded by the Philippine government alone, or by grants from disinterested parties,” he added.
Capiding defended herself by invoking Executive Order No. 674, the RITM charter, issued by the late President Ferdinand Marcos in 1981, which allowed her to receive compensation from grants.