Mothers of children vaccinated with the controversial drug Dengvaxia tried to attack ex-Health Secretary Janette Garin after a House of Representatives hearing over the dengue vaccine yesterday.
“You killed my child,” one of the mothers was heard screaming as they tried to charge at Garin, who was entering an elevator.
One of the women who tried to grab Garin was blocked by a legal aid before guards were able to hold the women back as Garin and her company tried to close the elevator.
Garin, who was health secretary under the previous administration, is being investigated for allegedly rushing to procure the vaccine and distributing it despite warnings that it should only be given to patients who’ve been previously infected with dengue. Giving it to people who have not been infected could instead make symptoms worse when they get dengue.
The women, who shouted at Garin and were crying, eventually admitted that their children were still alive but “feeling ill.”
Autopsies conducted by the Public Attorney’s Office (PAO) have linked the deaths of 14 children around the Philippines to the Dengvaxia vaccine.
However, doctors from the University of the Philippines’ Philippine General Hospital have publicly asked the PAO to stop their autopsies and leave the matter of determining deaths to “competent forensic pathologists,” contradicting the claims of the PAO’s forensic consultant Dr. Erwin Erfe.
“[He] may at the very best have been correct in only 1 of 14 of the cases, or 7 percent; and wrong in 13 of 14 or 93 percent. In actuality, he is probably wrong in all, given that any actual causative relationship between the death of the one child to the vaccine is yet to be determined.”
Doctors for Public Welfare, headed by another former health secretary Esperanza Cabral, said in a statement on Saturday: “None of the deaths of the 14 children autopsied were proven to be due to Dengvaxia. In fact, the deaths of 13 of them were totally unrelated to the vaccine.”
When asked by reporters if she thought the attack was just for show, Garin said in Tagalog, “Isn’t it obvious? I believe you saw what happened.”
Garin said that she believes the mothers’ motivations for confronting her in the elevator stem from massive disinformation surrounding the vaccine controversy.
“At the end of the day, the [mothers are] ultimate victims of misinformation, the ultimate victims of people calling for panic and making this whole issue exaggerated, the victims here are still the Filipino people,” Garin was quoted in CNN Philippines.
Check out the video of the confrontation below, posted on Brigada News Radio’s Facebook account:
