Stifling regulations are preventing China’s 1.4 billion people from accessing several common vaccines available in much of the rest of the world, raising public health risks and posing a challenge to global pharmaceutical companies in a huge potential market.
Sam Ding, a tech professional in southern China, says he crossed the border to Hong Kong twice to get his one-year-old daughter a key vaccine for potentially fatal conditions -- pneumonia, blood infections and meningitis.
Why Hong Kong? The pneumococcal vaccine from Pfizer Inc. that he was looking for wasn’t available on the mainland.
At the heart of Ding’s troubles is a massive pharmaceutical market where demand is outstripping the ability of regulators to keep up, forcing patients to scramble for many essential vaccines and hindering the ability of multinationals to bring them in. The Chinese vaccine market is estimated to grow at around 17% a year to hit 40 billion yuan ($8 billion) in 2018 from about 25 billion yuan last year, McKinsey & Co. estimates based on research reports. But more than 30 vaccine products identified by top multinationals as major revenue generators in other parts of the world aren’t sold on the mainland, according to the consultancy.
"For multinationals there are hurdles to bring key products to market, including registration timelines," said Franck Le Deu, senior partner at McKinsey.
Public faith in China’s vaccine system suffered another blow recently after police in Shandong province in eastern China arrested a mother-daughter team for allegedly selling more than 570 million yuan worth of vaccines illegally in 18 provinces since 2011. Local police said the pair distributed products that may have been improperly stored and transported, the official Xinhua news agency reported, without specifying whether the brands they sold were local or foreign.
While the improperly stored vaccines could possibly be ineffective, they were very unlikely to be toxic, the WHO said. But the scandal still stirred waves of outrage on social media and on online public forums.
Ding said he was willing to travel to Hong Kong twice because he felt it was very important that his daughter get the pneumococcal vaccine. "After she was born I was more worried about pneumonia," he said. "China’s environmental hygiene isn’t very good and it’s so densely populated, pneumonia is a serious matter."
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Sam Ding, a tech professional in southern China, says he crossed the border to Hong Kong twice to get his one-year-old daughter a key vaccine for potentially fatal conditions -- pneumonia, blood infections and meningitis.
Why Hong Kong? The pneumococcal vaccine from Pfizer Inc. that he was looking for wasn’t available on the mainland.
At the heart of Ding’s troubles is a massive pharmaceutical market where demand is outstripping the ability of regulators to keep up, forcing patients to scramble for many essential vaccines and hindering the ability of multinationals to bring them in. The Chinese vaccine market is estimated to grow at around 17% a year to hit 40 billion yuan ($8 billion) in 2018 from about 25 billion yuan last year, McKinsey & Co. estimates based on research reports. But more than 30 vaccine products identified by top multinationals as major revenue generators in other parts of the world aren’t sold on the mainland, according to the consultancy.
"For multinationals there are hurdles to bring key products to market, including registration timelines," said Franck Le Deu, senior partner at McKinsey.
Public faith in China’s vaccine system suffered another blow recently after police in Shandong province in eastern China arrested a mother-daughter team for allegedly selling more than 570 million yuan worth of vaccines illegally in 18 provinces since 2011. Local police said the pair distributed products that may have been improperly stored and transported, the official Xinhua news agency reported, without specifying whether the brands they sold were local or foreign.
While the improperly stored vaccines could possibly be ineffective, they were very unlikely to be toxic, the WHO said. But the scandal still stirred waves of outrage on social media and on online public forums.
Ding said he was willing to travel to Hong Kong twice because he felt it was very important that his daughter get the pneumococcal vaccine. "After she was born I was more worried about pneumonia," he said. "China’s environmental hygiene isn’t very good and it’s so densely populated, pneumonia is a serious matter."
Click Here To Register For Free Trial Services OR Give A Missed Call : +6531581402 Follow Us On Twitter : www.twitter.com/epicresearchsg Like Us On Facebook : www.facebook.com/EpicResearchSingapore Need Any Assistance Feel Free To Mail Us at : info@epicresearch.sg
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