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A veil around vaccine scams

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-04-09 07:53

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The Ministry of Health's press conference on recent vaccine scandals focused more on pledges to investigate rather than details of the problem, and hence couldn't calm public nerves, says an article in Nandu Daily. Excerpts:

Roughly, two things emerged from the Ministry of Health's press conference to explain the scandals of substandard vaccines: There have been supervisory loopholes but they are not serious and vaccines are still safe and trustworthy.

The officials, however, didn't say how Huawei Company could violate rules that ultimately led to the Shanxi vaccine scandal. The deaths of four children and illnesses of more than 70 in Shanxi province have been blamed on the vaccines they took including Japanese encephalitis, hepatitis B and rabies. The ministry didn't explain the Jiangsu vaccine scandal, either. A drug company in Jiangsu province has been accused of using additive in a rabies vaccine that allowed it to meet inspection standards at a lower cost but compromised the drug's potency.

While explaining the vaccine scandals, health officials tend to stress how complicated the problem is and how difficult it is to explain it clearly to non-experts. But it is not at all complicated to understand who is to blame for the scandals.

(China Daily 04/09/2010 page9)