CHINA has launched a new offensive in the battle to contain a hepatitis epidemic infecting more than two million babies every year, with the opening of an innovative medical facility in Shenzhen last week.
The plant will produce up to 20 million units a year of a genetically-engineered vaccine to guard against hepatitis B. One in eight people in China are believed to be chronic carriers of the disease.
''Hepatitis has for years been one of the worst health problems in China,'' a foreign health specialist based in Beijing told the Sunday Morning Post. ''It's an epidemic affecting every city and part of the country.'' China has invested over $250 million in the Shenzhen vaccine manufacturing facility.
It will be run by Shenzhen Kangtai Biological Products Company in an unusual joint venture with American-based Merck and Company under the terms of an agreement signed in 1989.
Merck brought a team of 17 Chinese scientists, technicians and production workers to the United States for extensive training. The biological technology is being provided to China in a rare royalty-free arrangement.
The plant itself was assembled in the US, dismantled, then shipped to China, according to a spokesman at Merck's headquarters in New Jersey.
''Now, they are essentially self-sufficient and our role is, for all purposes, over,'' he said.