A TOTAL of 202 people have been detained in connection with a scandal over an illegal black market vaccine ring, the Chinese Government said yesterday, as it vowed to improve supervision of the market.

    The case, involving millions of illegal sales of vaccines through a black market drug ring, has ignited public ire in the world’s second-largest pharmaceuticals market.

    The State Council, or Cabinet, said in a report that 202 people had been detained, and 357 health and regulatory officials, including officials of the national drug watchdog, had received administrative punishments.

    “Vaccine quality and safety are to do with people’s lives and health, especially children, and that is a red line that cannot be crossed,” the council said in the report, released on the Central Government’s website.

    While China’s vaccines are generally safe, the case has exposed serious failings and there must be lessons to be learned, it added.

    The supervision and regulatory system would be tightened, the State Council said, with better record keeping for the production, storing and transport of vaccines and tougher punishments for lawbreakers.

    The scandal has underlined the challenge the government faces to regulate a widespread and fragmented medicine supply chain.

    Shandong police announced last month that they had arrested a mother and daughter alleged to have illegally sold improperly stored or expired vaccines worth more than 570 million yuan (US$88 million) across 20 provincial-level regions since 2011.

    The mother and daughter are thought to have used a network of some 300 suppliers around the country.

    The potentially compromised vaccines could cause disability and death, the Xinhua News Agency said.

    The health scandal is China’s largest in financial terms on record, and the nation’s most serious since 2008, when the toxic chemical melamine was discovered to have been added to children’s milk powder, causing at least six infants to die and 300,000 to become ill.

    China’s top drug regulator has issued a circular ordering drug and health departments to trace the manufacturing source and to remove any of the substandard vaccines from the market as soon as possible. It also called for efforts to identify and apprehend the suspects still at large, and a thorough investigation into the supply and sales chain of these inferior products.

    Although produced by licensed manufacturers, the quality of the vaccines are questionable as they were not transported or stored properly.(SD-Agencies)