Health authorities in Southwest China's Chongqing Municipality said that suspected fake vaccines administered to babies in a community health center were bought via official channels, after local parents grew concerned about the vaccines' safety in the wake of a March scandal.
A joint investigation showed that a total of 346 sets of vaccines purchased by the Huayuan Road community health service center - 326 of which have been used - were all from the Chongqing Center for Disease Prevention and Control, the local government said Sunday on its official Sina Weibo account.
The government's investigation report also said, however, that the center has some management problems.
A complaint against the health service center was first made to police on Friday by a local parent whose child was receiving a vaccine there. The parent said she noticed that the syringe used to administer the vaccine was different from the one in which it was originally packaged, so she suspected the serum was fake, The Beijing News reported.
The inoculation that the woman's child was receiving is prepackaged inside a sealed syringe, so the use of a different syringe meant that the medicine might have been swapped, according to The Beijing News.
More than 400 parents said that their children had received the multi-dose vaccine at the health service center.
"They never wrote the batch number on my kid's vaccine record book, and they refused to give us the vaccine's box when we asked once," an anonymous parent of a 1-year-old told the Global Times on Sunday, adding that her baby has received three injections at the center.
According to this parent, the center was listed as a reliable location for children to receive vaccines provided by Chong-
qing health authorities in March, after a nationwide vaccine management scandal was uncovered in Shandong Province.
"It's every parent's right to bring attention to possible problems, but it should be noted that this event might only be an individual case that cannot represent the current situation across the country," said Zeng Guang, a medical expert at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
March's vaccine scandal revealed that improperly stored or expired vaccines worth a total of 310 million yuan ($47.8 million) allegedly were found to have been sold in more than 20 provinces and regions since 2011. Over 350 officials have been either demoted or fired for their alleged involvement in the sale of improperly stored or expired vaccines, the State Council said.
According to new vaccine safety rules released by the State Council on April 23, all companies and agencies involved in the sale and distribution of vaccines are required to keep records on their circulation and use, and vaccines of unknown origin must be reported to drug authorities and destroyed.
