As the death toll of children administered the Dengvaxia vaccine in the Philippines rises, a new vaccination spin is being sold to manipulate the situation. These tragic deaths continue to grow in number as calls for further prosecutions increase.
Sadly I suspect in the end we will see the big players get off the hook while the poor people suffer and die!
Calls For Further Prosecution As More Children Die!
I have covered this topic before as I am interested in how the situation is being handled. Briefly the Philippine government was sold a vaccine for dengue fever by Sanofi Pasteur with the aim of vaccinating a million children. Before the campaign had concluded children began to die and the campaign was stopped. It turned out that rather than immunizing children from dengue the vaccine ended up making the symptoms of dengue fatal!
Lots of legal wrangling is going on. Sanofi has not been keen to pay back the enormous amount of money it was prepaid by the government. Major players in this lucrative deal do not want to go to prison and the other pharmaceutical companies are worried about the negative impact on perceptions of vaccines in the Philippines.
The death toll continues to rise and so do the legal charges. Currently charges are being laid against the former president, health secretary, other public officials and Sanofi executives for corruption, graft and other serious charges relating to the deaths of vaccinated children. How these cases are handled will be interesting to watch. Anyone with any experience with legal cases will know that during the years of such a complex case there are many opportunities to influence the outcome or settle out of court - for those with deep pockets!
Although I doubt it will happen I believe it is only fair that criminal charges be brought against the bosses of Sanofi and their extradition sought to stand trial in the Philippines. After all they got huge bonuses from this dodgy deal!
This image is taken from the home page of Sanofi's own website. The gaul of these people's hubris as children in the Philippines are dying from their vaccine is appalling!
A Pro Vaccination Spin
As the Dengvaxia cases heat up, another movement is taking place in the Philippines. The deaths and subsequent exposure of malpractice at the highest levels in the Philippine government has understandably sent public trust in vaccines plummeting. Poor people understand corruption in a way that western communities don't because they have to live with it visible to them everyday. They may be poor but they are not naive and they can see what is going on. Because of this erosion of trust people do not want to put their most precious children in the hands of government health officials with this appalling record of corruption.
To combat this negative sentiment towards vaccines new campaigns are being run to improve the public's perception. Leaflets have been printed to try and deal with the parent's health fears and the children's fear of needles. What is interesting is that although touted as a department of health program, here again we see deep ties to the pharmaceutical industry.
The group working to promote this campaign won first prize at Unilab's Ideas Positive contest for public health projects in 2017. Unilab's website proclaims them to be "a leading pharmaceutical company in the Philippines." Again we see the ties between public health officials and big pharma!
These are the same ties that caused the deaths of the Dengvaxia victims. With the enormous amounts of public money available to big pharma for vaccines, corruption is rife globally within the industry. These kinds of competitions are just another reflection of this cosy and profitable relationship. The only problem is that it is the poorest people who have to die.
I don't see Sanofi executives giving Dengvaxia vaccines to their own children!
Unilabs is a pharmaceutical company that runs competitions to identify public health projects they can fund! Something fishy here!
Limited Studies Draining Public Resources
The true costs of lives and resources from Dengvaxia will not be known for many decades. Big pharma has always been criticized for rushing trials and evaluation periods to get their products to market sooner, whatever the risks. This seems to be happening in the Philippines now too.
To show that they are doing something the Philippines government is starting a monitoring campaign of all the children who received Dengvaxia. However what is being currently discussed is that this monitoring will take place for five years. This makes no sense at all unless you are trying to down play the impact of this vaccine.
What has been established is that children who had never previously had dengue fever are at greater risk of severe dengue fever that can cause death if they contract degue after they received Dengvaxia. This shows that the vaccine was not effective to begin with and that having Dengvaxia was far more risky than catching dengue with out being vaccinated.
You can get dengue at any stage in your life and most of these children were very young. A five year study is clearly inadequate to give an accurate picture of the impact. However it is a useful limitation if your goal is to minimize court cases and liabilities.
A big questions that those in the Philippines need to answer is who is going to bear the cost for this five year monitoring exercise in a country that has so many pressing needs? I believe that Sanofi should bear part of the responsibility for this!
The Dengvaxia App
In an uniquely modern twist on this tragic situation a Dengvaxia monitoring mobile app will shortly be launched in the Philippines. Ostensibly this app is to provide a two way communication channel between parents of children given Dengvaxia and government health agencies.
Parents will be able to report symptoms and changes in health to the government while the government will be able to share health warnings and updated information with families. This is very modern and sounds good on the surface. However again I worry about using tools like this to hide true figures and spread false information.
I will be looking into this further and although the app is not completed yet I will write a post looking at the app and providing a link once it's available. In essence the entire pharmaceutical industry has become so systemically corrupted that I have lost all faith in the system and the watchdogs. The tragic roundabout between big money, big pharma and big government continues unabated as the poor children continue to die.
Remember that Sanofi is trying to bring Dengvaxia to as many countries as possible! It will be coming to a needle near you soon if they get their way. If you live in the US you will not even be able to sue them if your child dies from Dengvaxia.
If vaccines are really about public health then their development, testing and implementation should be run for the public by the public and for no profit! That would be a major blow against corruption for the people!
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