FDA strengthens vaccine monitoring

Health Secretary Francisco T. Duque III. (Photo By Juliet C. Revita)
Health Secretary Francisco T. Duque III. (Photo By Juliet C. Revita)

FOLLOWING the report on counterfeit anti-rabies vaccines, Health Secretary Francisco T. Duque III said that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has beefed up its monitoring and post-marketing surveillance to ensure that vaccines and other health products are compliant with the standards set by the agency.

During a press conference at Marco Polo Hotel Davao Monday, February 4, Duque said the FDA has already initiated an investigation on the information provided by The Medical City in Taguig City that discovered that the anti-rabies vaccines that they have injected to about 1,700 patients were the fake version of Verorab vaccines. The genuine version of the vaccine is manufactured by Sanofi Pasteur.

He said the administrative case has been filed already against the alleged supplier while the criminal cases are soon to be filed pending the result of the initial investigation.

“We intend to make sure that the FDA is running after possible suppliers of fake vaccines, it may not just be anti-rabies but for now, let’s limit the discussion to anti-rabies but FDA is made precisely to ensure that none of these goes to the market. And by the way, the manufacturing of these fake vaccines is not yet clear whether it is locally manufactured or imported fake anti-rabies vaccines,” Duque said.

With the proliferation of fake vaccines and medicines, health professionals are mandated to be vigilant all the time on the health products that they are prescribing.

“It is extremely ordered to be vigilant on the part of our doctors, our pharmacists, our physicians, our hospitals to ensure that whatever health products such as vaccines and medicines, these should be ordered from reputable suppliers,” Duque added.

For the patients who were injected with fake anti-rabies vaccines, they were already informed through letters and notices to proceed to The Medical City so they will be injected with the real vaccine. To date, no patients have complained of any side effect following the injection.

“There is a system in place where these patients who purportedly had been injected with these fake vaccines to also report an adverse event following their immunization. So far there has been no report of any adverse events following immunization,” Duque said.

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