Chinese police yesterday arrested an unlicensed vendor suspected of having sold hepatitis A vaccine that may have been responsible for the death of one child and the sickening of more than 200 others, Xinhua state media reported.
The vendor, identified as Zhang Peng, disappeared last month after the students fell ill in the eastern province of Anhui. More than 2,000 students had been vaccinated on June 16 and 17 with products sold by Zhang.
Police arrested Zhang Peng in the provincial capital, Hefei, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
Unspecified infection
Six-year-old Li Wei suffered from an unspecified infection and breathing problems the day after she received the vaccination and died in a hospital a few days later.
Forty of the students who fell ill are still hospitalized, the Beijing Daily Messenger reported yesterday.
In a separate case, China confiscated 170 boxes of questionable vaccines, Xinhua said yesterday.
A routine check of medicine in the western city of Xian last Friday turned up the boxes with 50,000 vaccines inside, the Xinhua report said.
The agency didn't say what kind of vaccines were involved, although the boxes were labeled with names of manufacturers of traditional medicine.
Vaccine's origins
The inspectors became suspicious when the packaging showed names of factories, addresses and telephone numbers that didn't match, the agency said, without elaborating.
When authorities contacted the transportation company that had been handling the medicine, they gave yet another address for their customer.
The inspectors are still investigating the origin and the composition of the vaccines, the report said.
Just last week, a vaccine for a type of hemorrhagic fever sickened 44 school children in northern China.
China has been battling a surge in counterfeit or shoddy foods, medicines and other goods, many of which pose public safety threats.
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