The Ministry of Agriculture said yesterday that it has punished
13 domestic institutions involved in the production and sale of
fake bird flu vaccines, withdrawing its approval for them to
produce vaccines for this disease.
An unnamed ministry official said it has published a list of
nine officially authorized producers of four types of bird flu
vaccine, and that teams have been dispatched to each of them to
oversee the whole process of manufacture.
Xinhua News Agency reported today that the ministry sent nine
inspection teams out "recently" to supervise vaccine production in
23 provincial areas and regulate the veterinary drug market.
Since January this year, it has monitored 57 pharmaceutical
businesses and revoked 60 licenses for veterinary drug
production.
Many birds have been slaughtered and vaccinated after outbreaks
of the H5N1 strain of bird flu in China, four of which were
confirmed within the last three weeks.
There have been no confirmed human bird flu infections in the
country, though one death and two cases of illness diagnosed as
pneumonia have been reported by the government to the WHO as
possible instances of infection.
(Xinhua News Agency November 7, 2005)