WHO clears DOH on expired vaccines

The World Health Organization (WHO) has cleared the Department of Health (DOH) on the issue of expired vaccines, saying that the amount of wasted supplies was small.

In a letter to Health Secretary Francisco Duque III, WHO country representative Dr. Jean Marc Olivé noted that the "vaccine wastage is expected."

"It is cheaper to vaccinate one child and waste the rest of the vial than for that child to be hospitalized," he explained.

WHO even commended the DOH for "their many activities to strengthen the routine immunization program," including the "Ligtas Tigdas" campaign from February to March 2004. During this period, measles cases and deaths were reduced by 98 percent.

The global body also extolled the DOH for upgrading the storage facilities for the vaccines and for holding trainings that were focused on reaching out to previously untapped segment of the population.

Last November, DOH officials were grilled during a Senate budget hearing over a Commission on Audit (COA) report for 2004 that the department had P18.18 million worth of expired and about-to-expire vaccines and medicines.

The COA report also showed that another P7.29 million worth of the so-called GMA 50 medicines being sold at half price in 33 hospital-based drugstores were also rotting.

The DOH explained that the vaccines were not used because many local government units have "drastically" cut down their immunization sessions where the vaccines should have been used, causing supplies to stock up at the warehouses of the DOH’s Center for Health Development.

The DOH has created a task force to look into the wastage.

Olive said the acceptable measles vaccine wastage rate is 50 percent. And while the Philippines had the same wastage rate from 2000 to 2004, "expiring vaccines accounted only for 1.3 percent." — Sheila Crisostomo