(Eagle News)–Senator Richard Gordon on Saturday, March 2, said he was disappointed former President Benigno Aquino III and former Budget Secretary Florencio Abad were not among those indicted over the deaths allegedly due to Dengvaxia.
“Quite frankly, I am a bit disappointed because I figured na dapat tingnan maigi ang involvement ni (former) President Aquino, nila Abad and company because sila ang nag-revisit,” Gordon said in a radio interview.
In the hearings he led as chair of the Senate blue ribbon committee that looked into the Dengvaxia controversy, Gordon had noted what he said was the fast-tracked process of the purchase of the Dengvaxia vaccines for the government’s mass immunization program with Aquino behind the scenes.
He particularly noted the supposed immediate release of the Special Allotment Release Order following Aquino’s meeting with officials of Sanofi, who manufacture the anti-dengue vaccines, in Paris.
Gordon’s panel had recommended that apart from Garin and several others, Aquino and Abad in his capacity as then Budget chief should be held liable for supposed irregularities in the procurement of Dengvaxia.
In indicting Garin, and 19 other officials from Sanofi Pasteur, the Department of Health, Research Institute for Tropical Medicine and the Food and Drug Administration, the DOJ panel said they “exhibited ‘inexcusable lack of precaution and foresight’ when they facilitated, with undue haste, ‘the registration and purchase of Dengvaxia’ and used the vaccine in implementing a school-based dengue mass immunization program.”
“The Panel found sufficient evidence that Garin and the other respondents circumvented various regulations in the purchase of P3.5 billion worth of Dengvaxia vaccine which constituted proof of their reckless imprudence,” the DOJ panel said.
Over 800,000 were administered the vaccine under the government’s mass immunization program.
The Public Attorneys Office, which has assisted some of the families whose loved ones died after being injected Dengvaxia, has ruled there was a direct link between those deaths and the drug.
But the DOH has maintained no such direct relationship exists.
