Vietnam Health Facility Overwhelmed by 6-in-1 Vaccination Registrations

The number of people signing up for on-demand 6-in-1 vaccination, as a substitution to the government-subsidized 5-in-1 shots, has significantly increased in the central province of Thua Thien-Hue since earlier this year amid side-effects fear, the local VnExpress newswire reported. Vice Director of the Thua Thien-Hue Center for Disease Control Nguyen Dinh Son revealed the information. In previous years, the number of people who signed up for on-demand 6-in-1 vaccination in Thua Thien-Hue only accounted for 5% of all vaccinations in the province, with most of the rest choosing government-granted vaccines instead. Some people have claimed that government-granted vaccines, like India’s 5-in-1 vaccine ComBE Five and South Korea’s Quinvaxem, cause more side-effects on recipients than on-demand ones, said Pham Van Lao, director of the Center for Preventive Medicine of the Central Highlands’ province of Dak Lak. Quinvaxem became notorious after ten babies injected with the vaccine died between November 2012 and May 2013 and some more also died when the vaccine was reintroduced in October 2013. In January, a two-month-old baby in Hanoi also died a day after being injected with the ComBE Five. However, the health ministry has said that the vaccines were not to blame for the deaths. The 5-in-1 vaccine ComBE Five has been chosen as a government-granted vaccine by the health ministry since last December to replace the South Korea-produced Quinvaxem. The 5-in-1 vaccine protects against diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, hepatitis B, and Haemophilus influenza type B. Five million shots are given to about 1.7 million under-one-year-old Vietnamese children every year. (VnExpressEnglish)