Public anger is mounting in China after revelations that major vaccine makers violated safety standards.
Thousands of faulty vaccines have been administered to children, eroding public trust in essential services and damaging China’s standing overseas as it tries to become a major player in the pharmaceutical industry.
A Catholic doctor told a Catholic news provider the case showed that China has no moral boundaries, causing people to do whatever they want for their own interests.
The China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) announced in November 2017 that Changsheng Biotechnology Co. and Wuhan Institute of Biological Products had produced inferior DPT (diphtheria, whooping cough and tetanus) vaccines that had been administered to more than 400,000 children as young as three months old in Shandong, Chongqing and Hebei provinces.
Records
On July 15, the CFDA issued a circular stating that Changsheng had produced a rabies vaccine with fraudulent production records. Production of the vaccine was halted.
Changsheng received a penalty letter about last year’s faulty DPT vaccine from regulatory authorities on July 17, almost nine months after the incident was revealed.
Gao Junfang, chairwoman of Changsheng, was detained by police on July 24 with 14 other executives and staff suspected of criminal offenses.
Even though President Xi Jinping has ordered a thorough investigation, Paul, a Catholic doctor in Shaanxi province said that the scandal reflected the weak supervision of authorities.
“Authorities only deal with the heads of several vaccine makers. It is totally irresponsible,” he said, adding that Chinese media are concealing the truth about the scandal.