PAO ‘jumped to conclusion’ that deaths of kids were due to Dengvaxia —expert pathologist

An expert pathologist on Wednesday alleged that the Public Attorney's Office (PAO) "jumped to conclusion" that the deaths of some children who underwent dengue vaccination program were due to the Dengvaxia vaccine, when they might have been caused by other diseases.

Dr. Raymundo Lo, who specializes in anatomic and clinical pathology, made the testimony during the reopening of the inquiry by the House Committee on Good Government and Public Accountability and Committee on Health on the controversial Dengvaxia vaccination program.

According to Lo, his team interpreted the findings of the PAO forensic team on their autopsy of the bodies of the children who supposedly died after being administered the Dengvaxia vaccine and found that these "were not supported by factual data."

"There are many gross findings that may have different causes and should not be assigned to one disease process because these changes like congestion, swelling, hemorrhage, edema are non-specific and cannot be assigned to just one disease based on seeing them grossly," he said.

At the same time, Lo said that PAO forensic chief Dr. Erwin Erfe immediately told reporters after his autopsy that the deaths were caused by Dengvaxia even before microscopic examinations were done.

The microscopic examination findings, however, did not correlate well with the gross findings, Lo said.

"They jumped to conclusion that are not logical and do not have a basis on fact. Their conclusion is that these are Dengvaxia-related when the findings [show these] are clearly the result of another disease process as supported by established diagnosis and clinical course of the patient as well as the histologic findings," Lo said.

Lo said that by disseminating false conclusion to the public, PAO's doctors committed a "blatant" violation of their oath to "do no harm."

This, Lo said, generated "hysteria" among the public and prompted parents to recuse to have their children to be vaccinated.

"Therefore we are now experiencing a resurgence of epidemics and outbreaks of these diseases," he said.

PAO chief Atty. Persida Acosta, however, questioned the authority of Lo to refute the findings of their forensics team.

"May we ask the authority of the resource person to present controverting evidence against the evidence gathered by PAO to the 102 Dengvaxia victims who underwent forensic autopsy as well as histopathological exams of the blood samples and tissues by our two senior pathologists who are not present now?" she sai

"What is his authority to interpret the findings of the Public Attorney's Office?" she added.

Good government panel chair Xavier Jesus Romualdo, however, said that Lo's testimony was not meant to refute PAO's findings, but will only serve as a guide to the committee to come up with their recommendations.

"We will be accepting all the things you will be presenting," he said.

The controversial Dengvaxia vaccine, manufactured by French pharmaceutical company Sanofi Pasteur, allegedly posed health risks to more than 700,000 school children.

Sanofi Pasteur advised against the use of Dengvaxia in November last year, prompting the Department of Health to stop the implementation of the dengue vaccination program a month later. —LDF, GMA News