dengue, dengvaxia, #DengGate

ke naturukan (ka o) ang anak mo o hindi ng dengvaxia, kailangang mag-ingat, at maging mapag-bantay at alerto sa kalagayan ng ating paligid, gayon din sa mga senyales ng dengue.

MAG-INGAT SA LAMOK.  hindi lahat ng lamok ay nagdadala ng dengue virus pero mahirap sabihin kung alin, samakatuwid, matakot sa lahat ng lamok, ke sa araw o sa gabi nangangagat.

tiyakin na sa paligid ng bahay ay WALANG MGA GAMIT NA WALANG TAKIP — LATA, BOTE, MASETERA, GULONG, BARADONG ALULOD atbp. — KUNG SAAN MAY NAIIPONG TUBIG-ULAN NANG MATAGALAN (stagnant water)  sapagkat diyan mismo namumugad at nanganganak ang mga lamok na may dalang dengue.

4 years old ang panganay ko (in 1977) nang umuwi ito galing pre-school na may sinat.  lagnat-laki lang sana, dasal ko.  baka tempra lang ok na.  on the second, third day of fever (38+) dinala ko na siya sa pediatrician na nag-prescribe lang ng mas malakas na anti-lagnat (di ko na maalala ang name, gifaril yata).  over the next day, tumataas pa rin ang lagnat, tumapak na sa 39+, isinusuka ang gamot, at bahagya ko nang mapainom ng tubig o mapakain, kaya’t itinakbo na namin sa ospital.

isang tingin ng ER residents sa inner fold ng braso niya, kung saan meron na palang red rashes — gangga-tuldok ng karayom bawat isa — alam na nila.  H-fever pa ang tawag sa dengue noon.  agad siyang kinabitan ng suwero, kinunan ng dugo, at agad rin nalamang bagsak na ang bilang ng kanyang blood platelets — ito yung sangkap ng dugo na tinatawag ring “blood clot cell” — pag bumagsak ito dahil sa dengue virus, naaapekto ang mga daluyan ng dugo, una na ang maliliit na capillaries, at nagli-leak ang dugo.  mga tatlo o apat na bag of blood platelets ang naisalin bago nag-normal ang kanyang platelet count.

so, talaga, feel ko ang mga nanggagalaiting ama’t ina ng mga batang naturukan ng dengvaxia.

DENGVAXIA #DengGate

i must confess, rj nieto aka thinking pinoy who has been blogging about #DengGate is a facebook friend, mula pa nuong may 13 (day 4 since the may 9 2016 elections).  i had just posted here excerpts from teddy locsin’s Elections over, but not the count — right smack nuong nagkakainitan sa bilangan:  duterte was very out front but the vp race was still up for grabs (in a manner of speaking), and there was a hue and cry over dubious smartmatic antics.  teddy boy, already pro-duterte, was saying, let’s wait for the official count; if you think there were any peculiarities or irregularities in the counting, then file a protest with comelec.

the comment thread is mostly my exchange with boom buencamino who agreed with teddy boy, but when i brought up  smartmatic’s antics he shared a couple of links, one on the ñ, and one to thinking pinoy‘s BBM vs. Leni: Forget Math, Hash Code is the Smoking Gun.

which is to say that i didn’t think twice about accepting nieto’s friend request.  TP was still in pa neutral-objective mode, i thought, even if barely, but he seemed to be well-informed and it didn’t hurt to keep abreast of whatever he was sharing.

soon after i clicked confirm, he sent a me a private message:

I am a big fan. ThinkingPinoy here.

me: thanks! but are you sure you’re not mistaking me for my daughter katrina?

Ohhh. I thought you’re katrina.  Yeah, I am her fan. We do not agree on a million issues, but I admire her…

a lot of water under the bridge later, and TP is now duterte’s Big Blogger, with an ear behind certain closed doors and enviable access, it would seem, to every nook niche and cranny, including the cordon-sanitaired, and you wonder who his major sponsor/s is / are (alanpeter, is datyu? bonggo, is datyu?) and while na-hide ko na siya from my newsfeed — na-turn off ako when he became brazenly, arrogantly, pro-duterte and nawala na yung attempt, kahit kuno, at objectivity — now and then i still visit his wall and blog, especially since he started blogging about dengvaxia #DengGate.

feb 7 he posted DOH and Sanofi’s Secret: Dengvaxia ®) may cause multiple organ failure.  feb 9 he posted this on his fb wall:

THE DENGVAXIA SCANDAL IN TEN SIMPLE STEPS

Let me explain part of the Dengvaxia Scandal in very simple and concise terms.

1. In December 2015, Sanofi Pasteur submitted a registration application to the Food and Drug Administration Philippines, where it said right then and there that Dengvaxia may cause, among others, nerve damage, multi-organ failure, worsened dengue symptoms. Sanofi also said in the application that Dengvaxia has limited efficacy, and provides waning protection over time.

2. Common sense dictates that long-term trials should have been done to reasonably confirm or debunk those risks BEFORE mass vaccination. None were conducted. Worse, FDA DID NOT include nerve damage (neurotrophism) and multi-organ failure (viscerotropism) in the list of side effects on Dengvaxia’s product label, so the public had no way of knowing about them.

3. Instead of conducting a long-term trial, say, through a limited mass-market release, Department of Health (Philippines) Sec. Dr. Janette Loreto-Garin decided to inject it to ONE MILLION kids, with her succeeding to inject close to 500,000 before she stepped down. She was actually already actively working on buying it WAY BEFORE it was approved by the FDA.

4. Garin and co. were able to bypass the limited long-term trial requirement because DoH Usec Kenneth Hartigan-Go made long-term post-marketing trials OPTIONAL when he was still FDA head. Hartigan-Go was part of the Zuellig network before and after his government stint. Zuellig Pharma Philippines is Dengvaxia’s exclusive distributor in the country. According to a leaked email, Hartigan-Go even offered to modify government regulations to ease Dengvaxia’s entry into the country.

5. Despite full knowledge and admission of the potential serious side effects of Dengvaxia, neither DoH nor Sanofi informed parents about this prior to inoculation.

6. Phase 3 trials ended in September 2017 and Sanofi CONFIRMED ONE of the suspected side effects: that Dengvaxia worsens Dengue symptoms for recipients who’ve never had dengue. They announced this through the 29 November 2017 Sanofi Press Release.

7. Parent of kids who died after receiving Dengvaxia started to reach out to the Public Attorney’s Office PAO, so PAO chief Atty. Persida Acosta started investigating.

8. PAO’s Forensics head Doctor-Attorney Erwin Erfe, with the help of Ospital ng Maynila Medical Center pathologists, conducted autopsies and tissue tests on the victims. Aside from discovering possible signs of severe dengue, they also discovered possible signs of viscerotropism or multi-organ failure.

9. In short, PAO and Co. appear to be confirming NOT ONLY ONE BUT TWO of the side effects. That is, it appears that PAO may have accidentally discovered Dengvaxia may indeed cause multi-organ failure, aside from worsening dengue symptoms, something that’s OVER AND ABOVE what’s stated in Sanofi’s press release.

10. And what has Sanofi done about it so far? They went on a media blitz to discredit PAO, with Zuellig Family Foundation trustee and former DoH Sec Esperanza Cabral as their head cheerleader, and with a large number of doctors from the Philippine General Hospital — who are indebted to Sanofi or Zuellig in one way or another — as her back-up dancers.

And that’s the simple version of the Dengvaxia Scandal.

i leave it to DOH apologists, garin cohorts in particular, to dispute or belie any of nieto’s sequence of events.  regrettably, TP doesn’t cover two important points (off the top of my head):

one, palusot ni garin.  when pressed about why she went ahead with the mass vaccination program despite warnings by experts re sero-negatives, garin claimed with a straight face na, batay sa DOH studies, karamihan (90%) ng pilipino ay tinamaan na ng dengue at least once.  isa lang daw sa sampu (1 out of 10) ang hindi pa nagkaka-dengue.  samakatuwid, sa estima at expert opinion nila sa DOH, mas maraming pilipino, 9 out of 10, ang mabebenepisyuhan ng dengvaxia kaysa masasaktan.

ang problema, walang naniwala sa statistics na iyan, at nang hingian sila ng kopya ng DOH studies ay wala namang maipakita si garin at kanyang mga alipores.  sabi naman ng kabilang kampo, mas malamang na 50 % lang kasi ang nagka-dengue na, pero duda pa rin ako.  puwedeng ngang 50 % pero sa mga lugar lang na madalas tamaan at mataas ang incidence ng dengue, at hindi sa buong kapuluan at hindi buong taon; may pagka-seasonal ang dengue, correct me if i’m wrong.

sagot ng DOH, maaaring nagka-dengue ka na, pero mild lang, hindi mo alam na dengue na pala iyon.  ang problema, wala naman talagang monitoring system ang DOH, therefore, wala naman talagang datos.  based pala on non-existent studies.  figments of the compromised doctor’s imagination, LOL.

two, dedma kay ubial at duque.   TP unabashedly ignores what happened when duterte took over, how sec ubial wanted to stop the mass inoculation but certain HOR and Commission on Appointments members prevailed upon her to continue the program, or else.

as i said in an earlier post, the dengvaxia fiasco squarely straddles two administrations, and it would seem that, as usual, DOH’s compromised docs and peeps are circling the wagons, this time with old-hand sec duque in the lead, kind of.  alas.

and so like TP, i’m with PAO on this, and awaiting anxiously the official results of the autopsies.