Dr C discusses how the US CDC is telling everyone, even toddlers, get the new booster. And points out the side effects are more common than the risk of the disease, which is why the UK only recommends boosters for those over 65.
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In other news, the court case against officials who approved of the Dengue Vaccine might finally come to court Manila Standard article.
Science magazine lamented that these people were charged back in 2019...
full background in the Wikipedia page (although it is controversial of course so might not be accurate).
SciAmerica has another article discussing the scandal.
follow the money? The price tag was huge for a cash strapped country. And although dengue is a major problem, other diseases kill more people.
At three billion pisos ($57.5 million) for procurement alone, the Dengvaxia campaign would cost more than the entire national vaccination program for 2015, which covered pneumonia, tuberculosis, polio, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, measles, mumps and rubella. It would reach less than 1 percent of the country’s approximately 105 million residents. And although dengue was reported to kill an average of 750 people annually in the Philippines, it was not even among the top 10 causes of mortality. Among infectious diseases, pneumonia and tuberculosis took a far heavier toll.
the increased mortality was pointed out to the DOH, but if you read down in the article, note that the WHO pooh poohed the problem<P>
In retrospect, it did not surprise Dans and Dans that the authorities chose to ignore their concerns. “It was either believe us or believe the WHO,” says Antonio Dans. “If I were them, I’d believe the WHO. I mean, who were we? We were just teachers in a small medical school.” Filipino authorities were apparently so confident about Dengvaxia’s safety that they did not oblige Sanofi Pasteur to submit results from so-called pharmacovigilance trials that would usually test the safety of a new drug or vaccine in local conditions.
The induction of a new pharmaceutical product into the national program typically took three to five years, says Anthony Leachon, a former president of the Philippine College of Physicians, but the dengue vaccination program began right away, in April 2016.
it wasn't until late in 2017 that the drug company admitted that there was a problem.
The dengue saga also raises difficult questions about how pharmaceutical companies and regulators should proceed in the context of evolving scientific knowledge and imperfect vaccines. Is it ethical to endanger a minority in the interest of protecting a majority, as the WHO’s September 2018 advisory on Dengvaxia implies? Who should be making these difficult decisions: global bodies of experts, national health authorities, fully informed parents and doctors, or some combination of these? And who should be held accountable when things go wrong?
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