HCM CITY — After one infant died and five others were admitted to hopsital in critical condition this week allegedly related to vaccinations, the Ministry of Health pulled GlaxoSmithKline’s MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) shots pending further investigation.

The Preventive Medicine Department announcement to health departments nationwide on Thursday said that to ensure public safety, Glaxo’s MMR vaccine is suspended from the national vaccination programme until the Ministry of Health announces otherwise.

On Wednesday morning, a 13 month-old baby boy in District 5 was admitted to Children’s Hospital No 1’s intensive care unit in critical condition after vaccination with the MMR, called Priorix.

The boy was admitted with a 40 degree Celsius fever, difficulty breathing, and a bruise in the shot area. Even though doctors administered emergency treatment, the baby boy died that same evening.

Five other babies aged from 13 to 17 months also from District 5 were admitted to the same hospital with similar symptoms along with convulsion, shock and respiratory problems.

All of these babies had received the MMR shots from stocks at local ward health care clinics administered by District 5’s Preventive Medicine Centre’s team.

Le Truong, director of District 5’s Preventive Medicine Centre said that of the 109 Priorix shots his centre bought, 76 have been administered at the clinics and schools in the district.

Truong also said that transportation and storage methods at his centre and the clinics were all carried out according to required protocols.

HCM City’s Department of Health Director Nguyen The Dung said that this was the first time such incidents had occurred during the vaccination programme.

Dung requested the assistance of the HCM City Pasteur Institute and the Departments of Preventive Medicine and HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control to help with the investigation.

On Thursday, GlaxoSmithKline Viet Nam representative, Nguyen Thi Tuong Vi, said that the MMR vaccines imported to Viet Nam were produced in Belgium.

The shots administered to the infants came from an 11,000-shot Priorix case lot imported to Viet Nam last November, with an expiration date of December 2008. Of these shots, 5,000 have been administered while the remaining 6,000 shots are still in Zuellig Pharma Viet Nam Company’s stock.

Vi also said that two vaccine specialists from GlaxoSmithKline in Belgium have arrived in HCM City to work with the Vietnamese authorities in the investigation.

To date, 145 million Priorix vaccine shots have been given to children in 90 countries for over 10 years, without such incidents being reported. — VNS […]

http://vietnamnews.vnagency.com.vn/showarticle.php?num=01HEA130506 

ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTY FIVE MILLION

I was actually looking for today’s article about “Pentamortrix” – the 5-in-1 jab that is the latest evil foisted on stupid parents and their perfectly innocent children.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 14th, 2006 at 5:29 pm and is filed under Money, Science.