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Nearly 70 parents of children injected with suspect vaccines protested outside the health commission in Beijing yesterday morning amid a heavy police presence.
The parents gathered at the main gate of the National Health and Family Planning Commission along with about 10 children who were fit enough to join the demonstration.
They wore blue caps and white masks bearing short slogans, urging justice and awareness about their children’s plight.
According to photographs provided by parents, they held up white T-shirts that read “compulsory vaccines lead to disabilities in children”. They were prevented from wearing the shirts.
The protests came after mainland authorities sacked and demoted 357 officials and arrested 202 suspects for their alleged involvement in a scandal in Shandong province, where a racket involving illegally traded vaccines worth 570 million yuan (HK$683.3 million) had thrived since 2010.
After nearly three hours of peaceful protest at the commission, the parents were told to address their grievances to the commission’s petition office.
Parents said they came from across the country but met each other while seeking medical treatment for their children in Beijing.
Yi Wenlong, 47, from Shanxi province, said 67 families signed a petition to take legal action against the commission for “turning a blind eye to poor monitoring of children’s vaccines”.
“The victims developed problems as early as eight years ago, while some were afflicted only recently,” Yi said.
Yi said he had just been released from 30 days of detention in Beijing after he and four other parents urged the general public to buy China Youth Daily in mid-March for an in-depth report about the vaccine scandal.
Yi said he had come across about 2,000 parents like him online.
Feng Haijun, 31, from Henan province, said his three-year-old son lapsed into a vegetative state after receiving an encephalitis vaccine last August from a local county medical facility.
“We have spent more than 300,000 yuan on his treatment and the doctor said he is likely to remain in a vegetative state for the rest of his life,” Feng said.
“Who is going to take care of him after I am gone?”
(SCMP)
