1,900 got expired measles vaccine

Friday, February 7, 2003 at 09:30 JST
TOKYO — As many as 1,900 children may have been given shots of a measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine that had already passed its expiry date during the seven months up to the time such vaccinations were banned April 1993, Kyodo News learned Thursday.

The Health and Welfare Ministry, the predecessor of the current Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, apparently did not disclose the use of the expired vaccine or report it to a sub-panel of the ministry's Council on Public Health that had been discussing rampant cases of the MMR vaccine's side effects.

A group supporting victims of the vaccine's side effects alleges that the government deliberately covered up the expired vaccine's use.

An expired vaccine "will not lose its effectiveness immediately or raise the risk of side effects," a ministry official said, but added, "The use of expired vaccines is naturally a problem. We would like to look into the case to find out why that happened."

The vaccine was introduced in 1989 to protect children from the three diseases in a single shot.

Production of the stock used for the MMR vaccine was banned in 1991 after it caused side effects in a large number of children. The expiry date for the vaccine was September 1992.

According to vaccine reports that prefectures submitted to the health ministry at the time and other materials, 1,829 people were given the vaccine in eight prefectures between October 1992 and April 1993.

Kumamoto Prefecture saw the largest number of people who had the expired vaccine at 801, followed by Hokkaido at 318.

Data gathered by members of the predecessor body of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases show that in Tokyo and Kanagawa, two prefectures with no existing records on MMR vaccine use, a total of 104 people were given the vaccine.

In all, 1,933 received the vaccine over the period from October 1992 through April the following year.

The health ministry said, however, that the figure may include people who had the vaccine before September, the month it expired, noting that some reports may have come in late.

The ministry recently found an in-house document showing it had received reports on five boys aged between 1 and 4 who developed aseptic meningitis after receiving the expired MMR vaccine, but it had kept the fact concealed.

A court ruling is expected in March on a suit filed by people who remain disabled due to the vaccine's side effects and the families who lost their children because of the side effects. (Kyodo News)

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