http://id.medscape.com/reuters/prof/2001/12/12.10/20011207inds001.html

Aventis Pasteur MSD Recalls Hepatitis Vaccine

LONDON (Reuters Health) Dec 07 - Aventis Pasteur MSD, the European vaccines joint venture set up by Merck and Aventis, announced the recall of all stocks of its VAQTA hepatitis A vaccine this week because of concerns it might not be potent enough to protect people against the travel disease.

The firm said the withdrawal involves pre-filled syringes of VAQTA vaccine for adults and VAQTA K for children. The vaccine is made by Merck and loaded into syringes in the UK by Evans Vaccines, part of PowderJect.

A spokesman for the joint venture said: "The problem is an apparent reduction in the potency of the vaccine, but only in a fraction of the syringes." However, because of the difficulty of identifying which syringes were affected, it had been decided to recall every batch.

A spokesman for PowderJect said the exact nature of the problem was not clear. "All of the processes that we use are all fully agreed by Merck before we use them," he said.

Ralf Ehret, commercial director of Aventis Pasteur-MSD's German unit, said 532,000 doses of the vaccine, worth 12 million euros, were sold in Europe in 2000.