Editorials

Give us answers on vaccine

Updated: 2010-03-25 07:48

The government of Shanxi province finally responded. But the hastily held press conference on Monday left behind more questions than it addressed.

With only 10 minutes or so allowed for inquiries, the half-hour press conference revealed the grating ambivalence on the local authorities' part. On the one hand, they know there must be an official response. On the other hand, they were obviously not ready for our curiosities.

Not only were some of the journalists' questions left unanswered, most of our core concerns were ignored.

But we can see from their initial remarks that the previous statement from the local Department of Public Health claiming the expos of problems in the province's vaccine market was "basically untrue" was, well, basically untrue.

At least one suspicion has been officially confirmed - the mysterious vaccine supplier's monopoly of Shanxi's vaccine market was problematic. In the spokesperson's words, the arrangement did not go through a "strict bidding process", and the former head of the local Center for Disease Control and Prevention, who is now at large overseas, "had economic problems".

A central message from the press conference was that the vaccines offered now in the province are safe. We hope that it is a conclusion based firmly on truth. Although experts are yet to confirm or exclude the alleged causal relationship between the deaths and illnesses with the vaccines, we know with all certainty that inferior vaccines have the potential to kill and disable.

Now local authorities are desperately in need of an expert verdict that the relationship between the vaccines and the deaths and disabilities was not one of cause and effect. Let us hope that it will not compromise the professional conscience of investigators. Given the prominence of this scandal, there is little room for a cover-up.