Tran Dac Phu, Head of the Preventive Health Department under the Ministry of Health, said the made-in-Korea Quinvaxem vaccine will continue to be used, as the children showing post-vaccination reaction are now stable.
Recently 32 children in the Mekong Delta Province of Tien Giang were vaccinated with the vaccine that had been suspended for last five months, and suffered a negative reaction and were then hospitalized.
According to Tran Dac Phu the children were now stable after treatment at hospital.
Accordingly, the vaccine will be available for use next month in other provinces. Children in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City will be injected with the vaccine in November under the National Extended Vaccination Program (NEVP), said Phu.
Nguyen Tran Hien, Head of the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology and Chairman of NEVP, said health authorities in Tien Giang Province had reported hospitalization of 32 children who had shown a negative response to the vaccine last week.
The epidemiological experts who studied the case said most of the children had normal immunization reaction such as slight fever from 38-38.5 degree celsius and local swelling, redness and pain at the injected area. Hien said this kind of reaction is very normal.
Moreover, the rate of children with post-vaccination reaction was acceptable by the World Health Organization (WHO), Hien said. According to the World Health Organization, the rate of slight immunization reaction is 10 percent, even upto 50 percent, for chickenpox injection. In addition, there are a very small percentage of children who turn blue and experience convulsion fits.
Quinvaxem is used for preventing five potentially fatal childhood diseases, namely, diphtheria (D), tetanus (T), pertussis (P, whooping cough), hepatitis B (HepB), and Haemophilus influenza Type B (Hib).
