Government: PAO autopsies on vaccine deaths to continue

MANILA, Philippines — Malacañang rejected the call of health experts to stop the autopsy of the bodies of children who received Dengvaxia as Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II said he saw no reason to do so.

Presidential spokesman Harry Roque Jr. said the autopsy would allow the government to ferret out the truth about the controversy.

“We are flatly rejecting the call to stop autopsies. We will perform autopsies as they are required, because we need to find the truth,” the spokesman said yesterday.

Citing the University of the Philippines-Philippine General Hospital (UP-PGH) study, Roque said autopsy may have to be conducted on three bodies within 24 hours after death.

“Of course we support the position of the administration to allow neutral, impassioned experts to come to their conclusion and they have done so,” Roque said.

He noted that courts “very seldom” rely on findings from non-government medico-legal officers.

“We’re not telling anyone to stop what they are doing. We are just saying that we are flatly rejecting the call of the physicians to put an end to the exhumation because the position of the government is we’re in search of the truth; we will resort to autopsy when it is needed,” he reiterated.

For his part, Secretary Aguirre said he had “no order for (the Public Attorney’s Office) to stop the autopsies,” he said in a text message yesterday.

But Aguirre stressed that he would like to hear the basis of the group of doctors led by former health secretary Esperanza Cabral for questioning the credibility of results of forensic tests conducted by PAO on children who supposedly died after vaccination.

“I welcome the group of secretary Cabral to give its written position to us why the autopsies should be stopped,” the justice chief suggested.

Cabral’s group, Doctors for Public Welfare, called on the DOJ to stop the autopsies being conducted by the PAO forensic team led by physician Erwin Erfe and “leave the matter of determining the cause of death to competent forensic pathologists.”

In a breakfast forum, Cabral said PAO should limit its autopsies on children who have been established to have contracted dengue after vaccination.

“Before they exhumed the bodies, they should have looked at the causes of death of the children based on their clinical records and only those (who have died from dengue) should have been autopsied,” she said.

PAO should not have autopsied the children who had cancer and lupus, Cabral added as “they knew it would be hard to tell if these children died due to Dengvaxia.”

Cabral is among over 100 doctors, scientists, academicians and health advocates who asked the DOJ last Saturday to stop PAO from conducting autopsies on Dengvaxia-vaccinated children.

“(Erfe) may at the very best have been correct in only one of 14 of the cases or seven percent and wrong in 13 of 14 or 93 percent. In actuality, he is probably wrong in all given that any actual causative relationship between the death of the one child to the vaccine is yet to be determined,” the statement reads.

Aside from Cabral, the statement was also signed by Manuel Dayrit and Jaime Galvez-Tan, both also former health secretaries.

The group also lamented how the findings of PAO reported in the media have been causing public panic and discouraging parents from availing themselves of other immunization programs.

Through Department Order No. 792, the PAO was specifically tasked to “extend free legal assistance in civil, criminal and administrative cases to all possible victims of Dengvaxia-related injuries, illnesses and deaths.”

Persida Acosta, chief of PAO, then tapped a team of lawyers to gather statements and documentary evidence from parents and guardians of children who developed severe dengue after getting the vaccine.

Apart from the PAO, the DOJ also ordered the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to probe the controversial P3.5-billion dengue vaccine project of the Department of Health (DOH) that reportedly poses health risks to children already injected but without history of the disease.

Aguirre tapped the NBI to conduct a fact-finding probe to determine possible liabilities of officials behind the project that was approved by former DOH secretary Janette Garin during the previous administration.

The controversy on Dengvaxia broke following the advisory from French-based pharmaceutical company Sanofi Pasteur, saying new clinical analysis found that the vaccine is effective for people who have had dengue prior to immunization, but citing a risk of “severe” case of dengue for people who have not.

This development puts around 10 percent of the over 700,000 schoolchildren who received the shots at risk to a “severe” case of the disease, prompting Health Secretary Francisco Duque III to order the suspension of the dengue vaccination program pending recommendation on further action from the World Health Organization.

Meanwhile, the PAO has filed the first civil suit over the controversial Dengvaxia at the Quezon City Regional Trial Court, asking for over P4 million in damages for the family of a 10-year-old girl who died last year.

Acosta led the filing of the civil case against 30 respondents, including former health officials, headed by Garin and the board and officers of Sanofi and distributor Zuellig Pharma Corp.

The agency is representing the family of Anjielika Pestilos, a girl from Quezon City who died 84 days after she was vaccinated with Dengvaxia and a mere week after she was rushed to hospital. – With Sheila Crisostomo, Romina Cabrera