House recommends raps vs Benigno Aquino III, 2 others over Dengvaxia

MANILA, Philippines — Voting 14-4, a joint committee of the House of Representatives approved yesterday a report recommending the filing of graft and technical malversation charges against former president Benigno Aquino III and two of his former officials over the P3.5-billion Dengvaxia vaccine controversy. 

The committees on good government and public accountability as well as health headed by Camiguin Rep. Jesus Xavier Romualdo and Quezon Rep. Angelina Tan, respectively, approved the charges against Aquino, former budget chief Florencio Abad and ex-health secretary Janette Garin. 

Three other doctor-officials of the Department of Health were also recommended charged with graft for allegedly “conspiring” with the three officials and giving “undue advantage” to “favor” French manufacturer Sanofi Pasteur to provide the vaccines. 

They are doctors Maria Joyce Ducusin, Julius Lecciones and Kenneth Hartigan-Go. 

Aquino declined to comment pending consultations with his lawyers while Abad said: “First of all, it’s just a House committee report. And it was subject to a number of amendments. The report still needs to be debated and acted upon in the plenary sessions. It’s not the act of the House yet.”

A copy of the report stated that Aquino – who repeatedly denied committing any wrongdoing – should be held liable for “approving” the P3.5 billion in just a matter of days in December 2015, and that he, along with Abad and Garin, provided “shortcuts” for its immediate implementation. 

“This was done even though the safety and efficacy of Dengvaxia had not been clearly established,” a portion of the report read, pointing out there was “manifest partiality, evident bad faith or gross inexcusable negligence” on the part of all the officials concerned. 

Romualdo said the technical malversation charges were borne out of the fact that the special allotment release order indicated it was for dengue use in Regions 3, 4-A and National Capital Region when it should have been for augmentation of the expanded project of immunization. 

New dengue vaccine?

As this developed, Tokyo-based Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. announced this week that its anti-dengue vaccine appears to be effective in preventing the four types of the mosquito-borne disease. 

The company noted the first analysis of the Tetravalent Immunization against Dengue Efficacy Study (TIDES) trial showed that its “investigational live-attenuated tetravalent dengue vaccine (TAK-003) was efficacious in preventing dengue fever caused by any of the four serotypes of the virus.”

It added that while review of the extensive data set is ongoing, TAK-003 was “well tolerated with no significant safety concerns to date.”

The TIDES trial is continuing and additional results are expected later this year, along with results from other Phase 3 studies.

“We are very encouraged by the performance of our dengue vaccine candidate in the study. This brings us one step closer to helping the world tackle the massive burden of dengue,” said Rajeev Venkayya, president of the Global Vaccine Business Unit of Takeda.

Venkayya added they are looking forward to publishing the data in a peer-reviewed journal as soon as possible. 

Takeda also said it is “advancing the clinical development, commercial manufacturing and stakeholder consultations to support a potential future global launch of the vaccine.”

The TIDES trial, Takeda’s largest interventional clinical trial to date, enrolled over 20,000 healthy children and adolescents ages four to 16 years living in dengue-endemic areas. – With Christina Mendez