Duque: Health secretaries should heed formulary body's advice

Health secretaries should heed the “expert” recommendations of the Department of Health’s (DOH) Formulary Executive Council (FEC), Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said on Saturday amid the controversial procurement of P3.5-billion Dengvaxia vaccines.

Duque said in an interview on Super Radyo dzBB that the group is composed of experts in the fields of science, public health, and health economics, whose recommendations should be “respected.”

“Para sa mga sekretaryo o sa mga kalihim, ‘wag kakalimutan na basahin at suriin maigi ang kanilang (FEC) mga reports kasi mga expert reports ‘yang mga ‘yan,” he said.

“Hindi naman komo sekretaryo ka eksperto ka sa mga gano’n na subject matter, so kaya kailangan respetuhin at ‘wag balewalain ang kanilang (FEC) expert opinion at ito ang iyong masasandalan,” he added.

Former DOH undersecretary Susan Mercado had said that the FEC was against the mass use of controversial dengue vaccine Dengvaxia and its subsequent purchase.

"Ang Formulary Executive Committee ng DOH simula't sapul tutol sila dito. They did not want to use Dengvaxia on a mass scale," Mercado said in an Unang Balita interview on December 6.

Duque said the FEC is the DOH secretary's “protection” when making decisions.

“Kapag nagkaroon ka ng problema maituturo mo sila---sila ang mga experts na nagbigay ng kanilang rekomendasyon at sinundan ko lang ‘yan bilang kalihim, dapat ganun,” he said.

The FEC, composed of 11 experts, is a body within the DOH in charge of identifying “diseases for which medicines need to be included in the formulary” based on their review of disease statistics from hospitals and input from specialists, the DOH, among others.

The FEC, among its other functions, also deliberates on and reviews applications for medicines and prepares a recommendation based on findings by the Evidence Review Group, which evaluates medicines based on assessments of efficacy, risk-benefit, and cost-effectiveness, according to the Revised Implementing Guidelines for the Philippine National Formulary System.

The government's purchase of the dengue vaccine is now under probe in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, following an advisory by Dengvaxia's manufacturer that the dengue vaccine, the world's first, may pose a risk of "severe" dengue to those who have not been infected prior to immunization.

More than 800,000 children had been vaccinated with Dengvaxia before Duque halted the dengue immunization program. —Nicole-Anne C. Lagrimas/ALG, GMA News