A beauty shop owner who sold his customers illegal cervical cancer vaccines from Hong Kong has been jailed for a year, prosecutors in Minhang District said yesterday.
According to prosecutors, the man, surnamed Cao, met a medic who specialized in administering Gardasil — a human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine — when he attended a beauty and cosmetics trade show in Hong Kong and arranged to send him mainland customers. For each injection, Cao earned HK$1,000 ($128).
Later, Cao began selling vaccines he received from the medic to customers for 2.5 times the cost (6,500 yuan), mailing them to their homes without taking measures to keep them cool.
Minhang police raided his home last April and seized 21 units of vaccine.
Meanwhile, in another police raid in Minhang, the head of a Taiwan company's Shanghai branch was allegedly found in possession of Gardasil vaccine he obtained from overseas exhibitions to sell for 6,000 yuan per injection between June 2014 and April 2015.
These two cases were not related to the recent vaccine scandal which involves 310 million yuan worth of vaccines that were not properly refrigerated or transported.
So far Shanghai has not found any of these poorly stored vaccines in its market.
According to the local health and family planning commission, suppliers in Shanghai are all legitimate enterprises that carefully monitor the vaccines' transport, storage and use.
