MANILA – President Rodrigo Duterte will create a three-man panel of Asian experts to investigate the effects of the controversial dengue vaccine Dengvaxia.
The President “will be bound by the findings of these experts on … whether or not Dengvaxia actually caused deaths,” said Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque.
Duterte decided to form the panel due to “conflicting testimonies” from investigations of experts from the Public Attorney’s Office (PAO) and the University of the Philippines – Philippine General Hospital (PGH).
“As a lawyer and former prosecutor, he knows that expert witnesses can cancel out each other’s testimonies,” said Roque.
The panel of experts should be foreign and “have no links absolutely with the Philippine government.”
“With conflicting testimonies from the experts from PAO and PGH, he (Duterte) is constrained to seek further advice from these interested parties,” the spokesman said.
The issue started when Sanofi Pasteur, producer of Dengvaxia, announced in 2017 that the vaccine may cause severe dengue symptoms on those who have not had the disease./PN
