6 injured, 1 dies after US Made MMR

HCMC Suspends US-made Vaccine After Worker’s Death

The Ho Chi Minh City Health Department has or­dered city hospitals and health centers to stop using a batch of US-made vaccines after a worker died and five others fell ill after getting vaccinated.

Six women workers from the Tango Candy Company were hospitalized Tuesday 30 minutes after be­ing getting a shot of MMR, a vaccine to protect people against measles, mumps, and rubella (German measles).

One worker, Huynh Thi Kim Hoa, experienced breathing difficulties and a fall in heart rate, and she later fainted and slipped into a coma. Hoa was taken to Gia Dinh Hospital where doctors said she had suffered a brain hemorrhage.

The 20-year-old died Friday morning.

Hospital director Do Hoang Giao said Hoa's condition was not caused by the vaccination but was the result of defective blood vessels around her brain. The bleed­ing could have been trig­gered anytime.

The five others also suffered breathing difficul­ties and were also taken to the hospital. Doctors discharged them that evening.

The batch in question, H1666, was manufactured by American drug company Merck Sharp & Dohme Inc. on October 24, 2004, and expires in November this year.

The city Preventive Health Center said it im­ported 10,000 doses of the vaccine, more than 1,000 of which had already been used.

The idea that the MMR had nothing to do with her death is just a little difficult to swallow.

She fell ill 30 minutes after the following the vaccine. Since she was 20 years old, she had lived through 350,400 (actually more since this was following her birthday) - 30 minute intervals without her "defective blood vessels" in her brain hemorrhaging.

That means that when she collapsed, she less than a 1 in 350,400 chance of this happening to her at that moment.

So we are to swallow that it was just coincided with the vaccination by chance and was completely unrelated?

More importantly, we are to believe that the docs actually believe that themselves?