CHINESE authorities are hunting 300 people suspected of illegally selling deadly, spoiled vaccines, in what could be the country’s biggest case of its kind.

    Late on Friday authorities issued a public notice of the identities of the suspects, who are thought to have been involved in a vaccine trading ring worth as much as 570 million yuan (US$88 million), State media reported.

    The authorities called on the public to help track down the dealers involved, the reports said.

    The vaccines had the potential to cause disability or death, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

    According to Xinhua, the suspects sold compromised vaccines, which were neither adequately refrigerated for storage nor transported in approved conditions, to hospitals and disease control centers in at least 24 provinces and municipalities, including Beijing, where they were used over a number of years.

    The reports said that although the case was not made public until Friday, the illegal operation was first discovered in April 2015.

    Since then, the police had made over 20 raids across the country to confiscate unsafe products and had arrested a former doctor only identified by her surname, Pang, as well as her daughter, a medical school graduate, in eastern China’s Shandong Province, the reports said.

    The women had profited some 310 million yuan from the illegal sale of vaccines since early 2010, the State Public Security Bureau alleged.

    The duo is accused of purchasing 25 types of vaccines from more than 100 pharmaceutical salesmen, both licensed and unlicensed, then selling them on to illegal agents as well as local medical facilities at higher prices.

    So far, authorities have been unable to work out precisely what quantity of compromised vaccine entered the market, media reports said.

    The vaccines the suspects allegedly sold included ones used against chicken pox, rabies, meningitis and hepatitis A, none of which are mandatory injections in the mainland.

    Pang and her daughter have been charged with running an illegal business and are waiting for trial.

    Another six suspects have been arrested in areas including Inner Mongolia, Hebei and Shandong, while another 10 have been detained.

    According to local police officer Chen Bo, the temperature of the vaccine warehouse was close to 14 degree Celsius when the mother and daughter were arrested and the vaccines were stored without refrigeration.

    Thepaper.com, the digital news outlet that first broke the story, reported that Pang, 47, had worked as a doctor at a public hospital but in 2009 was given a three-year prison sentence, suspended for five years, after she was convicted of illegally selling vaccines worth almost 5 million yuan.

    It is against the law in China to sell vaccines without proper licenses. Though produced by qualified manufacturers, the quality of the vaccines was questionable as they were not transported in approved conditions. (SD-Agencies)