Senate OKs P1.16B add’l budget for Dengvaxia patients

MANILA – Senate approved a P1.16-billion supplemental budget to be used in assisting children inoculated with Dengvaxia.

Voting 18-0, senators unanimously passed the bill seeking the amount, proposed by the Department of Health, to fund the medical needs of children who were given the controversial dengue vaccine.

The amount will come from the partial refund from unused vials returned by French pharmaceutical company and Dengvaxia manufacturer Sanofi Pasteur to the government through its local distributor Zuellig Pharma.

Eighty-one percent of the budget (P945 million) will be allocated for medical assistance program, or the health assistance fund for Dengvaxia vaccinees, including patients admitted in hospitals and outpatients.

Meanwhile some P148 million (13 percent) will be placed for public health management, P78 million for assessment and monitoring Dengvaxia vaccinees, P70 million for supplies and medicines, and P67 million for human resource for health deployment.

Around P25 million will be allotted for supplies and medicines that the nurses will use in monitoring the patients while P45 million will be used to produce Dengvaxia assistance card for the patients.

In summer of 2016 the government under President Benigno Aquino III initiated a nationwide dengue immunization program. It bought P3.5 billion in Dengvaxia shots for one million public school children in regions reported to have the highest incidence of dengue.

The DOH stopped the program in December last year after Sanofi Pasteur said the vaccine might increase the risk of severe dengue in recipients who have not contracted the dengue virus. At the time, over 800,000 schoolchildren have already been inoculated.

SOURCE: Panay News

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