Girl’s death after rabies shot hits raw nerve in China after vaccine scandals
- Three-year-old vaccinated after dog scratch dies one day later
- Case attracts attention from millions of people as investigators probe circumstances
A three-year-old girl has died in eastern China one day after receiving an anti-rabies vaccination – striking a raw nerve in a country still reeling from a series of vaccine scandals in recent years.
Local authorities are investigating the child’s death, which happened late last month, and her story has been read 30 million times on microblogging site Weibo.
The girl was vaccinated after being scratched on the finger by a pet dog. Her father, surnamed Zhang, took her to the local hospital in Lianyungang city, Jiangsu province, as a precaution and she received the shot around 23 hours later, he told online media portal The Paper.
Zhang was informed his daughter may experience a fever after the vaccination but that night her temperature rose and could not be controlled with medication. She died the next afternoon.
Zhang and his family agreed to an autopsy on April 30 and asked investigators to seal the remaining batch of vaccines as well as his daughter’s medical records and relevant footage from the hospital’s surveillance cameras.