Did Dengvaxia-associated deaths result in an increase in vaccine hesitancy in the Philippines?

Abstract

The development of the Dengvaxia vaccine and the subsequent vaccination campaign of 2016 in the Philippines proved to be an outstanding failure. This case study focuses on the impact of the vaccination campaign, which had a goal of vaccinating one million schoolchildren, ultimately reaching 830 000 students. Sanof Pasteur’s failure to adequately warn the Filipino public about Dengvaxia’s effect on antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE), coupled with rushing the implementation of the program by the Department of Health, ultimately led to the shutdown of the campaign in 2017. Therefore, we predict that the media sensationalization of the campaign, which created a public outrage, led to distrust of the healthcare system and vaccine hesitancy as well as an increase in vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles in the Philippines.