Story at-a-glance

• Over a period of two months, eight infants in China died within hours, and in some cases minutes, of receiving hepatitis B vaccines
• Nine other deaths among Chinese children aged 5 and younger were also recently reported following hepatitis B vaccination
• Six of the deaths occurred in infants who had received the vaccine made by Shenzhen Kangtai Biological Products, while two occurred after hepatitis B vaccine produced by drug maker Beijing Tiantan Biological Products
• Health authorities in China have since launched an investigation and have suspended the use of millions of doses of hepatitis B vaccine made by Shenzhen Kangtai
• Serious questions regarding effectiveness, low transmission rates among babies and the steep risk of side effects make the hepatitis B vaccine’s use very hard to justify for healthy newborns