BEIJING — China’s Health Ministry is investigating the safety of inoculations in a northern province after a report that defective vaccines possibly killed four children and seriously sickened dozens.
China’s Health Ministry said March 18 that it would look a report by Wang Keqin in the China Economic Times, while cautioning that it had examined the evidence in late 2008 and not found a widespread problem.
But Chen Taoan, the former chief spokesman of the Shanxi Province Disease Control and Prevention Center and still on the center’s staff, told The New York Times on March 18 that a senior official there had been relieved of all duties at the end of last year because of improprieties related to the vaccines.
Chen said the center, which is part of the Shanxi Health Department, had required all hospitals in the province to buy vaccines at steep prices. To monitor compliance by the hospitals, the center put a sticker on each package of vaccine to show that it had been approved.
But the stickers would not adhere to the packages in air-conditioned rooms, Chen said, so the center routinely through 2006 and 2007 had the vaccines transferred to a warm room where the stickers were attached, Chen said.
“I saw boxes and boxes of vaccines piled up high like a hill in a hot room without air-conditioning,” he said. “Over the course of two years, I complained more than 30 times to the center’s leaders that these vaccines were no longer effective.”
Chen said he was still on the center’s payroll but had been relieved of his duties because of his objections to the handling of the vaccines. The center stopped exposing the vaccines to heat in 2008 but did not recall those that might have already been damaged, he said.
The press office of the Shanxi Health Department declined to comment, saying that it had already made a statement to the official Xinhua news agency. Xinhua reported that Li Shukai, the deputy director of the department, had said the China Economic Times article was “basically not true.”
The China Economic Times newspaper reported March 17 that vaccines for encephalitis, hepatitis B, rabies and other diseases administered by government-run clinics were possibly linked to the deaths of four children in 2008 and 2009 and the sickening of at least 74 others in the province.
The newspaper said the four children who died were 8 months old and 3 years, and each had convulsions and fever shortly after being vaccinated. Doctors were unable to diagnose their illnesses before the children died.
Other children developed major illnesses such as encephalitis, with some becoming crippled, the report said.
The article said the children’s parents were blaming the vaccines.
Li told Xinhua that provincial health experts had examined some of the children and concluded that vaccines did not cause their problems.
The ministry urged health authorities in Shanxi province to promptly report any abnormal reactions triggered by vaccines, saying "the ministry attaches great importance to this issue and will carry out an investigation immediately," according to a statement posted on its Web site late March 17.
But the China Economic Times published an editorial March 18 saying its report was the result of a six-month investigation backed up by medical records and face-to-face interviews, The Associated Press reported March 18.
The Health Ministry said it had investigated the vaccines in 2008 but that tests on samples had showed the vaccines met standards. Its statement didn’t give details about why it investigated at the time.
China’s drug industry is lucrative but poorly regulated. Chinese manufacturers and other players along the drug supply chain have been blamed in recent years for deaths linked to counterfeit or shoddy medications at home and abroad.