The made-in-Korea vaccine Quinvaxem will be available for use next month after being suspended for five months, the Health Preventive Department and the National Expanded Vaccination Project (NEVP) announced on Tuesday. Use of the vaccine was suspended by the Health Ministry on May 4 for investigation, after nine deaths and dozens of cases of severe allergic reactions among local infants. The vaccine will be available again as the result of the investigation showed that there were no unsafe cases in relation to the use of this vaccine, Nguyen Tran Hien, head of the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology and chairman of the NEVP, told Tuoi Tre. “We will provide the public with an explanation that most of the complications after vaccination were caused by other factors, not the vaccine itself,” Hien said. In Sri Lanka, after stopping the use of Quinvaxem for two years over fears of complications caused by the vaccine, such complications have not disappeared, Hien said. Forensic tests showed that most of the children who died after being vaccinated with Quinvaxem had suffered from diseases – mainly heart problems – before the vaccinations, Hien explained. When the vaccine is re-issued in October, a new vaccination process will be applied, in which medical screenings of patients will be conducted to detect those who should not receive a Quinvaxem injection, or should delay the injection. Also, every vaccination center will only receive 50 children per session and will directly contact parents of children needed to be vaccinated to provide them all necessary details related to the vaccination.

Hien also said 1.5 million doses of Quinvaxem have been imported recently and most of them have been examined to ensure safety He also answered questions from Tuoi Tre related to the use of the vaccine.Q: Under the current vaccination schedule, children will be vaccinated three times, when they are two, three and four months old. At such ages, diseases are hard to detect. In many other countries, the vaccination is given when children aret 5, 7 and 12 months old – when it is easier to detect diseases. So should Vietnam change its vaccination schedule? Hien: There is not enough evidence to change the vaccination schedule. Many other countries are applying the same schedule as Vietnam. Children often get whooping cough when they are under two years old, so if they are vaccinated later, they may catch the disease. We are calling for information that serves as evidence for a need of change the vaccination schedule for safety reasons.Some blame the deaths of three children on July 20 after receiving Quinvaxem on the use of a wrong vaccine by health workers. Why are the results of the investigation of the deaths still not available after two months? Hien: The Health Ministry has twice sent official letters to the Ministry of Public Security asking them to step up their investigation, and investigators have replied that they are trying their best to identify the causes of the deaths.