Hong Kong ombudsman accuses authorities of inadequate monitoring of high-demand vaccines
- Ombudsman accuses Food and Health Bureau and Department of Health of lack of showing any effort in explaining their monitoring mechanism for vaccines
- It urges the government to ensure transparency of information once Covid-19 jabs become available in private market and also prevent the spread of counterfeit shots
Hong Kong’s ombudsman has accused authorities of inadequate monitoring of high-demand vaccines following an investigation into their quality, after fake human papillomavirus (HPV) shots were found at two clinics in 2019.
The findings prompted the watchdog to urge the government to ensure transparency of information once Covid-19 vaccines became available in the private market and also prevent any counterfeit or parallel imported vaccines from entering the local market.
“Investigation by the office has found that for those vaccines that are in general less prone to parallel import or counterfeiting, the government has already put in place a quite comprehensive monitoring mechanism for such vaccines provided by private healthcare facilities,” a statement from the office said.
“Nevertheless, for vaccines with excessive demand, the authorities’ monitoring mechanism had been inadequate in the past,” the statement said. “Fortunately, the Department of Health and the Customs and Excise Department took prompt action in the wake of the incidents involving nine-valent HPV vaccines, conducted investigations at the private healthcare facilities involved and made arrests,” it added.
But the ombudsman also accused the Food and Health Bureau and the Department of Health of lack of showing any effort in explaining their monitoring mechanism for vaccines provided to private health care facilities or to provide stepped up measures following the counterfeit incidents.
It also said the Department of Health had not taken into account the vaccine’s supply and demand in its risk assessment factors for its market surveillance mechanism. The ombudsman found the department lacked the authority to investigate private clinics solely on the grounds of investigating counterfeit vaccines.
HPV vaccines offer protection against the human papillomavirus, which increases the risk of, among several other diseases, cervical cancer – the seventh most common cancer among local women in 2016. That year, 510 cervical cancer cases were reported.