Sanofi Pasteur partners with DOH on dengue

MANILA, Philippines - Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccines division of Sanofi, is supporting the Department of Health (DOH) for the effective establishment and implementation of a National Laboratory-Based Surveillance for Dengue at the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) through the Asian Foundation for Tropical Medicine Inc. (AFTMI).

The joint agreement will substantially augment the information on dengue and will ultimately enhance knowledge and awareness throughout the Philippines.

The cooperation aims to strengthen the formation of a self-sustaining, routine, systematic, and geographically representative dengue serotype surveillance using existing Real Time RT PCR equipment in the subnational laboratories. 

The allocated funds from Sanofi Pasteur — spanning across three years — will cover the training of subnational laboratory staff in dengue test methodology and practices and its quality assurance, and set up and training of staff at 20 sentinel sites for specimen collection and transport.

This partnership shall significantly contribute and complement the efforts of the DOH in addressing dengue.

“It is our privilege to be a partner of the DOH and RITM for an initiative that will further expand the dengue surveillance system in the Philippines. Furthermore, the generated data will help us in defining the right strategies and actions on how to control the disease and reduce the burden that it gives to the country,” said Ching Santos, country manager of Sanofi Pasteur Philippines.

Sanofi Pasteur has been engaged in dengue vaccine research for almost 20 years and is committed to helping reduce the public health, economic and societal impact of dengue, particularly in this season of increased incidence of dengue fever in Southeast Asia.

Dengue is a major public health problem in the Philippines. In 2013, the country experienced 187,031 dengue cases and 591 deaths — or 0.33 percent lower than the previous year.

Most of the cases were from Region 4-A (15.10 percent), Region 6 (11.24 percent), Region 3 (10.24 percent), NCR (8.61 percent) and Region 7 (8.35 percent), based on the Disease Surveillance Report of the DOH.

The expenses incurred in the fight against dengue include those for hospitalizations, treatment, lost productivity and in lives lost as well as costs for dengue-control measures, tests and public information drives.

In the Philippines, eliminating dengue has become an urgent public health imperative.

The emergence and re-emergence of dengue can be traced to a number of factors such as:

• Population growth and unplanned urbanization which may result in high population density with substandard housing;

• Poor sewage systems; and

• Improper disposal of garbage.

Several studies have pointed out that factors (temperature and rainfall) related to changes in climate considerably increase the toll of dengue infections.

In addition, it is also believed that humidity may impact the transmission of the dengue virus. Most dengue cases have been recorded in Metro Manila.