‘No fake vaccines so far’
Ministry: Medicines being checked all the time
SELAYANG: There are no cases of fake vaccines in Malaysia so far, the Health Ministry said.
Deputy Health Minister Datuk Seri Hilmi Yahaya assured the public that the National Pharmaceutical Control Bureau was vigilant and checked on medicine all the time.
“Don’t worry, our medicines are in the good hands of the National Pharmaceutical Control Bureau.
“If there is a case, they will report it immediately,” he said after launching the Second International Conference Table Top Exercise and Communication in Disaster Medicine yesterday.
Dr Hilmi said this following reports of fake vaccines in Indonesia and China recently.
He said it was not likely for fake vaccines to be used in the Malaysian market because all medicine had to be registered and they must carry the MAL registration number, including vaccines.
“And we have the batch number and from there we can check if doubtful. We can also check the hologram to know whether the vaccines are genuine and if they are not genuine, a report can be made to the bureau.”
Medical Development Division director Datuk Dr Azman Abu Bakar said medicine monitoring was done in batches, and was an ongoing process.
In a statement, Health director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said that the ministry carried out its checks on unregistered and fake vaccines to ensure they were not in the market.
He said vaccine licence holders here also had not detected any fake vaccine.
He also reminded hospitals and private clinics to buy vaccines from licensed suppliers only. Meanwhile, Dr Hilmi also said that a Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) survey had shown that many emergency medical staff had adequate disaster medicine knowledge but lacked a sense of urgency.
“We need to improve on that and will continue to train them,” he said, adding that more than 2,000 medical staff and those from other agencies had been trained on disaster medicine.