Philippines halts dengue immunisation campaign owing to safety risk

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, …