China said Saturday that it sacked six senior officials over the defective vaccine case involving Changchun Changsheng Bio-tech Co. Ltd.
Five officials at the now defunct China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA), including Ding Jianhua, who headed two departments at the CFDA, were removed from their posts, the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) said in a statement on its website.
The sixth sacked official, Wang Youchun, was deputy dean of the National Institutes for Food and Drug Control (NIFDC). The dean of the NIFDC, Li Bo, was ordered to “make profound self-examinations,” according to the statement.
The defective vaccine case exposed many loopholes as relevant officials were found in dereliction of duty as they did not provide sufficient supervision nor were they strict enough in their inspection, the statement said.
During the country’s cabinet restructuring, the SAMR was formed in April, replacing the CFDA and two other agencies that had overlapping duties to strengthen oversight of food, drugs, and consumer and industrial products.
On Friday, 11 officials in Central China’s Hubei Province were punished for the case of substandard DPT vaccines produced by Wuhan Institute of Biological Products Co. Ltd.
Provincial authorities said the 11 officials work for departments including the provincial food and drug administration, Wuhan municipal government and Wuhan municipal food and drug administration. Six of them were removed from their posts, while the other five were given inner-Party warnings and demerits to their records.
Wuhan Institute of Biological Products and the company staff responsible for the incident will also be punished.
The batch of DPT vaccines, produced on July 19, 2016, was proved substandard due to a short-term equipment failure, which resulted in improper distribution of the active constituent in the vaccines.
DPT refers to a combination of vaccines for three infectious diseases: diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus.
(Xinhua)