China freezes use of US-made vaccine for children

BEIJING: Chinese authorities have ordered freeze on use of a US-made children's vaccine for fear of contamination, state media has reported.
   
The State Food and Drug Administration said in a notice that the use of doses of the vaccine sold in the Chinese capital besides Tianjin, Shandong, Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong, Hainan and Sichuan provinces should be stopped, official Xinhua news agency said.
   
This is, however, part of a worldwide recall by the New-jersey based company, Merck.

The company itself had announced last week that it had initiated a voluntary recall of 11 lots of its Haemophilus influenza type B vaccine, PEDVAXHIB, and two lots of its combination Haemophilus influenza type B/ hepatitis B vaccine, COMVAX.
   
"Merck is conducting this recall because it can not assure sterility of these specific vaccine lots," the company said in a statement on its website.
   
China imported 104,930 questionable PEDVAXHIB doses with the batch number J2438, according to a Beijing Morning Post report.
   
Health authorities in south China's Guangdong Province have frozen nearly 19,220 doses, while 7,120 others were sold earlier.
   
No cases of adverse reactions to the vaccines have been reported so far. In Beijing, 2,580 of the 2,640 doses purchased were frozen.
   
PEDVAXHIB is meant for routine vaccination against an invasive disease caused by Haemophilus influenza type B in infants and children two to 71 months of age.