A vaccine scandal in China causes an outcry

WANG SHENGSHENG, a lawyer who lives in Guangzhou in southern China, is the mother of a newborn baby. The province’s health officials advised her, she says, to have her baby vaccinated not only against tuberculosis and hepatitis-B (which is mandatory) but also against chickenpox, hepatitis-A, meningitis and other diseases, which is not. She did so, and got a hepatitis-A vaccination herself. A few days later, China’s latest medical scandal erupted. The country, it turns out, has been using millions of doses of outdated or improperly stored vaccines for the diseases not covered by the mandatory programme.

Ms Wang did not take this lying down. Shocked by the lack of information about the health implications of receiving faulty vaccines, and concerned that she may have unknowingly endangered her child, she joined 12 other lawyers in writing an open letter to the national government demanding a national investigation and full disclosure into what is fast becoming China’s worst medical scandal since 2008. That year, America’s Food and Drug Administration found that a Chinese manufacturer had been adulterating heparin, an anti-blood-clotting drug. There was also a huge public outcry in China that year when it was revealed that more than 300,000 children had fallen ill and six had died after drinking tainted milk.