An expert panel of doctors from the University of the Philippines-Philippine General Hospital is investigating if the deaths of 14 children had any link to the controversial dengue vaccine Dengvaxia, officials said Friday.
Dengue was blamed for only four of the 14 deaths being probed, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said, with lupus and meningococcemia named as the cause of the others.
But now the panel of experts will verify those reports, health officials said.
The government expects the panel’s findings in one or two weeks, Duque said.
“We asked them the question, number one: what they think is the cause of death, and then second, do they think it is related to the vaccination,” Assistant Health Secretary Enrique Domingo told reporters.
According to Duque, “we need to watch out for 837,000 students who have been vaccinated and to us this is paramount.”
He added the government wants to return unused Dengvaxia stock worth 1.5 billion pesos ($30 million) to Sanofi and get a refund.
Earlier, the Food and Drug Administration suspended the government clearance for Dengvaxia for one year and fined Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccine manufacturer, P100,000 over alleged violations of the body’s regulations.
“Sanofi Pasteur will continue to cooperate in full transparency with the Philippines FDA and is committed to comply with the Philippines laws and regulations,” the company said in response.
The country stopped the sale and distribution of Dengvaxia last month after Sanofi, the French manufacturer, warned it could worsen symptoms for people who had not previously been infected with the virus.
Sanofi has maintained the vaccine does not kill people, but did not comment on the health department’s new announcement.
More than 800,000 schoolchildren received the vaccine last year in the world’s first public dengue immunization program.
Dengue, a mosquito-borne illness, is a leading cause of serious illness and death among children in some Asian and Latin American countries, according to the World Health Organization.
More than a thousand people died of dengue last year in the Philippines, the health department said. (Agence France Presse)