A
2-month-old baby in Hanoi died Friday night after getting a shot of the
controversial 5-in-1 vaccine Quinvaxem, and the health authorities once again
defended the vaccine’s quality.
Hoang Duc
Hanh, deputy director of Hanoi’s health department, suggested that the baby
died of anaphylactic shock, a serious condition which happens when one’s body
is too sensitive to a kind of drug.
The baby
girl received the injection at a local medical center on Thursday morning and
she started to have fever and cough a lot in the afternoon, local media
reported.
Her
parents took her to a district hospital the next morning and to Saint Paul
Hospital that night, when doctors said she had died before arrival.
Quinvaxem
is a WHO prequalified drug and has been distributed in Vietnam by Berna Biotech
Korea Corp since 2010 under a national immunization program sponsored by the
global vaccine alliance GAVI.
It
protects children from two months old against diphtheria, tetanus, whooping
cough, hepatitis B, and Haemophilus influenza type B.
Babies
are given the vaccine for free, but it has lost much of the public trust
following at least 23 post-vaccination deaths since 2012. In all the cases, the
health authorities said there's no problem with the vaccine's quality and its
administration.
The
latest incident was the second death in Hanoi in the past three years.
Saint
Paul Hospital on the same day received another patient with anaphylactic shock
from receiving Quinvaxem, but the baby survives.
Vietnam
provides around 5.5 million Quinvaxem shots every year and up to 200,000 of
more costly alternatives like the French-made Pentaxim, which costs around
US$30 a shot.
Quinvaxem
uses whole-cell preparations in its whooping cough component while costly
alternatives use purified antigens, which are considered safer, but their
supply is limited.
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