MANILA – The Department of Justice dismissed the libel charges filed by Janette Garin to fellow former Department of Health secretary Paulyn Ubial over the Dengvaxia vaccine controversy.
In a verdict released Wednesday, the Justice department said it found no malice in Ubial’s statements when she blamed Garin for the deaths allegedly caused by the controversial vaccine.
“The objections of Ubial and the other respondents against the administration of the dengue vaccine were made not out of malice but of a sense of justice,” read part of the DOJ resolution.
“It can then be said that the respondents who were very vocal in their objections to the administration of the Dengvaxia vaccine, and concerned about its effects in the human body, had acted out of the sense of justice, thus negating ‘actual malice,’” it read further.
It was understandable that, like the public, the respondents, who were medical practitioners, were “enraged” by the alleged effects of Dengvaxia, which was administered to hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren, stated the DOJ.
Garin charged Ubial with libel for the latter’s allegedly malicious public statements supposedly insinuating that the administration of Dengvaxia was marked with corruption, done in haste and did not follow standard protocol.
Ubial and several others were still facing a separate libel charge filed by Garin’s husband, Rep. Oscar Garin Jr. (Iloilo, 1st District), whom Ubial accused to have pushed her to expand the dengue immunization program in Central Visayas.
The controversy with Dengvaxia started when manufacturer Sanofi Pasteur announced in late 2017 that the drug may lead to severe dengue symptoms for those who have never been infected by the virus.
Garin, being the Health secretary when the government bought the vaccine, led a widespread dengue vaccination program that had some 830,000 schoolchildren inoculated with Dengvaxia./PN
