In July, Chinese vaccine maker Changsheng Biotechnology was found to have fabricated records and arbitrarily changed the process parameters and equipment during its production of freeze-dried human rabies vaccines. Substandard diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus (DPT) vaccines that Changsheng produced were administered to 215,184 Chinese children. Another company, Wuhan Institute of Biological Products, produced substandard DPT vaccines and sold 400,520 of them to the public. China’s drug regulator launched an investigation and arrested 15 people from Changsheng Biotechnology, including the chairman.
About a month after the outbreak of the scandal, the Chinese government offered to re-administer the vaccine without charge to people who had been previously vaccinated with Changsheng’s rabies vaccine. However, according to Radio Free Asia, few people have gone to get vaccinated and some no longer trust domestic vaccine manufacturers.
On August 10, a nurse at a hospital in Shenzhen that provides free re-administration of vaccines told the reporter that the hospital uses the vaccine of the Liaoning Chengda Company, a vaccine manufacturer not struck by the scandal. Individuals did go there to get vaccinated, but not many.
A gentleman, Mr. Zhang from Guangdong, had his child vaccinated with Changsheng’s vaccine. He said in an interview that he no longer has confidence in domestically made vaccines. If a company has not been exposed, that does not mean that it has no problem. He would rather choose to use imported vaccine.
“In my situation, I will not dare to get vaccinated again. It is useless. I really worry about domestic vaccinations. I will try as much as possible to get imported vaccines; otherwise there is no guarantee. Companies that have not been exposed may still have a problem. In the case of Changsheng, one employee exposed the problem, right? If he hadn’t done it, we would never have known it. As a matter of fact, they had detected the problem before, but they chose not to publicize it. We don’t have the right to information. So if domestic things are not exposed, it does not mean that they have no problem.”
Some netizens expressed ridicule: Is the vaccine used this time not fake? Will we still have to get vaccinated once again?
Source: Radio Free Asia, August 10, 2018
https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/yataibaodao/huanjing/yf2-08102018100530.html