Fury in China over fake records of rabies jab

Leaders try to limit damage amid fresh public health scandal involving drug routinely given to babies

CHINESE leaders were yesterday scrambling to contain the damage from a fresh public health scandal, after a pharmaceutical company was found to be faking records for a rabies vaccine which is routinely given to babies.

Responding to an online furore that began over the weekend, Li Keqiang, the premier, said that Changchun Changsheng Life Sciences Ltd, located in north-eastern China’s Liaoning province, had “violated a moral bottom line”. He pledged to “resolutely crack down” on violations that endanger public safety.

The premier’s remarks were aimed at assuaging Chinese parents who routinely complain about worrying over fake food, milk and medicines.

Chinese police have launched an investigation into Changchun Changsheng, its chairman and four senior executives over suspected criminal behaviour, the official Xinhua news agency said late yesterday. They are suspected of fabricating production and inspection records. Regulators announced last week that the company, China’s second-largest rabies vaccine manufacturer, was ordered to stop production and recall its rabies vaccine.

Days later, revelations by Chinese provincial authorities that batches of diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus vaccine were found to be faulty further inflamed public anger. More than 250,000 doses of the vaccine had been sold, China’s state broadcaster reported.

But the case went viral after a report posted online by an anonymous person over the weekend revealed that industry regulators had in fact discovered production issues at Changchun Changsheng late last year, despite only just disclosing them. “All my friends are freaking out with this vaccine case, everyone is scared. It really reflects big loopholes and issues with China’s food and drug safety regulation,” wrote one Weibo user under the handle 1988 Cheng Hongyu.

“Yesterday it was milk powder, today vaccines. What will it be tomorrow?” another wrote, referring to a major

‘All my friends are freaking out ... Yesterday it was milk powder, today vaccines. What will it be tomorrow?’

scandal in 2008 when several infants died after industrial chemical melamine was added to milk powder to raise protein levels. Chinese censors, which had scrubbed the original post on Sunday, appear to have applied a relatively light touch to social media posts, allowing citizens to vent their rage.

By yesterday afternoon, the hashtag “Changchun Changsheng makes fake vaccines” had been viewed hundreds of millions of times on Weibo.

Online news outlets, such as The Paper, have also been allowed to pursue the story. Yang Yuze, a writer for The Paper, wrote that national policies to boost the pharmaceuticals industry were creating opportunities for corruption. “The main problem is insufficient regulation, missing regulation, powerless regulation,” Yang wrote.

Changchun Changsheng’s phone lines were busy for several hours yesterday and executives could not be reached for comment. The case is not the first such vaccine scandal to reverberate through China.

In 2016, public anger erupted after the discovery that police had broken up a criminal ring that had sold millions of faulty baby vaccines. Much of the anger was due to the fact that police did not disclose the case until months afterwards.

Consumer safety issues are a sensitive topic in China, but even more so when they relate to children. In 2008, multiple Chinese dairy firms were implicated in a scandal in which hundreds of thousands of babies fell ill after consuming infant formula that contained the industrial compound melamine.