China’s Health Ministry said yesterday faulty vaccines were not to blame for the deaths of four children in northern Shanxi Province, after a domestic newspaper blamed substandard vaccinations.
China has been beset by a series of product safety scandals over the past few years. At least six children died in 2008 after drinking milk contaminated by the industrial chemical melamine.
In 2003 and 2005, three Chinese children suffered severe brain damage after being vaccinated against Japanese encephalitis. Their parents blamed a substandard vaccine, something the government denied.
In the latest case, the China Economic Times reported last month that four children died and at least 74 became sick in the poor inland province of Shanxi, after getting vaccinated against illnesses including encephalitis, hepatitis B and rabies.
The problems arose when the vaccines were spoiled by the summer heat, the report said.
The Health Ministry immediately began an investigation, but spokesman Deng Haihua (鄧海華) said bad vaccines were not to blame for the four deaths.
One child died of encephalitis, one of epilepsy and the other two deaths were suspected to be a combination of encephalitis and respiratory failure, Deng told a news conference.
Rare complications can occur with any vaccine and it is usually hard to pin down the reason, which may relate to the quality of the vaccine or the person’s own immune system.
Proper storage and refrigeration requirements for many types of vaccines sometimes present a problem when they need to be transported across vast distances.
China, often called the world’s factory, is struggling to convince a skeptical domestic and global audience that it has won a battle to improve safety standards after scandals involving everything from pet food and dumplings to cough syrup.
In 2007, China executed former drug and food safety chief Zheng Xiaoyu (鄭筱萸). His misdeeds led to the approval of many medicines that should have been blocked or taken off the market, including six fake drugs, a court found.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS