Illegal Vaccine

On October 16, Chinese authorities handed out penalties totaling more than 9.1 billion yuan ($1.32 billion) to a company for the illegal production of a human rabies vaccine.

Changchun Changsheng Life Sciences Ltd. violated China’s laws and regulations on drug management and production, according to an administrative penalty decision made by national and local drug authorities.

Violations included blending different batches of vaccine fluid, falsifying dates of production and using expired fluid to produce some of the batches. The National Medical Products Administration annulled the rabies vaccine approval document and certificates for related products from the company and imposed a fine of 12.03 million yuan ($1.73 million).

The Jilin Food and Drug Administration revoked the company’s pharmaceutical production license, confiscated the illegally produced vaccines and took control of the company’s capital of 1.89 billion yuan ($273.149 million). A fine of 7.21 billion yuan ($1.042 billion) was also imposed.

This hefty fine was three times the total value of the defective vaccines produced and sold by the company.

Individuals directly responsible for the violations will be banned from carrying out drug manufactur- ing and operating activities, and those suspected of committing crimes will face criminal charges.