Wang Aihua

    IT is quite reasonable for people to feel aggrieved if millions of dollars’ worth of black-market vaccines really have been distributed through medical institutions across China, but there is no need to panic.

    Those most concerned with the matter, parents, should feel a little better since the World Health Organization (WHO) said that the vaccines in question posed very small risks. Furthermore, Chinese health authorities said Thursday that no increase in anomaly or abnormal responses to vaccination had arisen in the past five years.

    By checking their inoculation records against the list of vaccines involved in the case, parents find the vaccines all fall into China’s second category of voluntary immunizations for rabies, hepatitis B, etc. rather than those compulsory for all children.

    With 16 medical institutions involved, further information such as when each institution bought the vaccines and who received them is still undisclosed.

    There is every reason to question the regulatory and supervisory bodies that allowed such a thing to happen. It is inexplicable that the main suspect, a woman previously convicted of similar crimes, was given a suspended sentence and allowed to commit the same crime again. It is just as surprising that it took several years for the case to reach the attention of authorities.

    The reason given by the food and drug watchdog for their monumental lapse — insufficient manpower — cuts little ice.

    In addition to hiring and training more staff, such cases should be prevented by laws and regulations, perhaps by allowing only authorized bodies to distribute vaccines.

    (The author is a staff writer with Xinhua News Agency.)