Philippines halts dengue immunisation campaign owing to safety risk

BMJ 2017359 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.j5759 (Published 12 December 2017)Cite this as: BMJ 2017;359:j5759

The Philippines has halted a dengue immunisation campaign and all marketing of the world’s first approved dengue vaccine, Sanofi Pasteur’s Dengvaxia, after post-market testing confirmed that it can increase the risk of severe dengue in people who have never been exposed to the virus.

The vaccine is at the centre of a growing political scandal in the Philippines, where 830 000 schoolchildren have already been vaccinated in a campaign that continued unmodified despite a World Health Organization warning in July 2016 that Dengvaxia may pose a threat to people who had never been infected.

As anti-vaccine protestors demonstrated outside the Philippines Congress, …

 

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LINK http://www.bmj.com/content/359/bmj.j5759

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