Vaccine scandal has shattered public trust in supervision

The vaccine scandal raises many tough questions that the thorough investigation promised by President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang must not ignore, especially because the substandard vaccines could have been given to many children below the age of 12 years nationwide.

To begin with, how can just a few people own the bulk of China's vaccine industry, which supplies vaccines required by the national compulsory vaccination system and thus makes innocent children fall prey to the substandard vaccines they produce by paying kickbacks to local disease prevention and control centers?

The scandal highlights a painful fact - that the drug administration departments check the vaccines and medicines only to make sure they are "safe" without testing their effectiveness. In an interview with the media, the drug administration officials said they are mainly responsible to check whether the vaccines are produced by licensed producers or not, asserting that professionals are needed to verify whether they are effective as well.