Aquino, Garin other officials at fault for pushing anti-dengue vaccine: draft report

April 11, 2018

Former President Benigno Aquino III, Health Secretary Janette Garin and other officials were found  ultimately responsible for putting the lives of thousands of children in danger through the use of  anti-dengue vaccine. Senator Richard Gordon, the chairman of the Blue Ribbon committee, presented the unsigned report to reporters Wednesday, said Aquino and other officials were guilty based on evidence gathered during the hearings conducted in the past months. In the committee report, Gordon said there was “obvious conspiracy” between Aquino and Garin to facilitate the procurement of the anti-dengue vaccine Dengvaxia in 2016, an election year. “The confederacy to procure and inject en masse was not merely ill-advised or unwise, it was criminal,” the report stated. The committee also found former Budget Secretary Florencio Abad and Philippine Children’s Medical Center executive director Julius Lecciones liable for violating the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act. The four were cited as public officers who entered into a contract on behalf of the government that was manifestly and grossly disadvantageous to the state, whether or not they profited or will profit from this. According to Gordon, he intends to circulate the committee report for signature of the committee members and sponsor this in plenary when sessions resume in May. “Aquino, Garin, Abad and other officials are primary conspirators and must be held criminally liable because, as succinctly put by the old Spanish legal maxim ‘El que es causa de la causa, es causa del mal causado’- he who is the cause of the cause is the cause of the evil caused and must be prosecuted for all the tragedy, damage and possible deaths resulting from the Dengvaxia mass vaccination program,” the report stated. The report said Aquino and Garin were also liable for the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act by persuading, inducing and influencing another public officer to perform an act in violation of the rules and regulations and the law. “No one in the bureaucracy could anymore say no to him and her. Whenever Aquino and Garin met with Sanofi, the bureaucracy offered no resistance at all, following meekly as lambs, with DOH acting like a runaway train,” the report stated. "And each time they met, the bureaucracy started acting with undue haste, losing all forms of objectivity, ignoring warnings from experts, local and international, and started acting in wanton disregard of the health and welfare of the children and putting them in grave peril,” it added. Gordon recalled how former DOH undersecretary Kenneth Hartigan-Go testified during the hearings that “a political decision to allot budget from the national agencies’ savings was already made by a higher committee.” DMS