November 8, 2005

 

China says fake bird flu vaccines threaten public health
 

 

China warned Tuesday that fake bird flu vaccines to protect poultry threatened public health, and said one unapproved product was being sold in northern Liaoning province, the site of a recent outbreak.

 

China Central Television said authorities found a fake vaccine produced by Jinyu Baolin Inner Mongolia Biotech Manufacturing for sale in Liaoning.

 

"This fake medicine could result in serious consequences," Jia Youling, chief veterinary officer of China's ministry of agriculture, said in a television interview. "It could cause very serious harm to both people and poultry."

 

There is no approved human vaccine for bird flu, which is almost always caught from close contact with infected birds.

 

Authorities feared that a strain of bird flu, H5N1, could mutate into a form that is easily passed from human to human, sparking a possible pandemic.

 

The television report listed nine companies approved by the ministry to manufacture and sell any of four approved bird flu vaccines. It warned consumers not to buy vaccines that had not been approved.

 

China has reported four bird flu outbreaks in the past four weeks, resulting in the culling and vaccination of tens of millions of birds, though no human cases have been confirmed.

 

China suffered from rampant and sometimes dangerous product piracy. Bogus medicines that had none of the declared ingredients on the packaging were common.

 

China has imposed increasingly strict measures following warnings that human cases would be inevitable, if the country could not prevent outbreaks among its 5.2 billion chickens, ducks and other poultry.

 

On Sunday, the government re-opened an investigation into whether bird flu killed a 12-year-old girl and sickened two people last month, in cases originally ruled not to be H5N1. The World Health Organization was helping with the investigation and warned Monday it could take weeks for a conclusive diagnosis.

 

China required authorities to kill all birds within three kilometres (two miles) of an outbreak and vaccinate all birds within five kilometres (three miles).

 

Vaccines were also being used as a precaution in areas that have not experienced outbreaks, including Beijing and Shanghai.

 

Under Beijing city regulations, anyone who failed to immunise their birds faced up to 15 days in prison and a RMB200 (US$25) fine. More than 20 million birds have been vaccinated in Beijing.

 

Also Tuesday, the official China Daily newspaper reported that a Beijing insurance company planned to offer life insurance covering human bird flu fatalities.

 

Minsheng Life Insurance has received regulatory approval to offer coverage plans that would pay between RMB50,000 and RMB100,000 in the event of death due to bird flu, the newspaper said.

 

It said the product would be commercially available "very soon," but gave no specific date.