China needs to more closely regulate the market for private vaccines within its borders, the World Health Organization said Tuesday after authorities broke up a massive illegal drug ring earlier this month.

Police in China arrested more than 130 people allegedly involved in the illegal drug trade after the group dumped around $48 million worth of illegal vaccines onto the private Chinese drug market. Much of the medicine had expired before it was sold.

“This incident has highlighted the need for more, stricter enforcement of vaccine management regulations across the board,” WHO China representative Bernhard Schwartlander said in an email.

According to Chinese police, a woman and her daughter, who have since been arrested, led the drug ring and sold more than $100 million worth of illegal vaccines across the country since 2001.

Private sellers

All told, 29 pharmaceutical companies are believed to have sold the illegitimate drugs to 16 institutions.

Global Measles and Rubella Strategic Plan 2012-2020

 This ten year global plan for measles and rubella outlines the strategy that needs to be fully implemented to achieve the measles and rubella goals endorsed by the World Health Assembly. The plan sets out the: vision, goals and targets for the 2011-2020 period, recommended strategies, guiding principles, priorities, costing of reaching the targets, and the challenges as well as ways to overcome them. The plan incorporates the lessons learnt from 10 years experience in measles and rubella accelerated control and elimination and is jointly developed by the Measles Initiative which is spearheaded by the American Red Cross, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), United Nations Foundation, UNICEF and World Health Organization.

follow on:http://who.int/immunization/documents/control/ISBN_978_92_4_150339_6/en/

link to document: http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2012/9789241503396_eng.pdf?ua=1

When the Ebola outbreak was confirmed in Guinea two years ago, one of the reasons the virus spread so quickly was due to the high amount of people traffic across the borders of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. To mitigate the introduction of new Ebola cases or other diseases by cross border travellers, the Red Cross has introduced a community event-based surveillance system. It is successful, in large part, due to the engagement of community members.

Settled near the Kolantin River, a Red Cross health screening post is now part of the picturesque landscape at the popular Binticabaya border crossing between Guinea and Sierra Leone. Outfitted with a hand washing kit, a thermometer, and a register, volunteers at the screening post are ready to monitor people crossing the river between the two countries.

"I cross twice a week to visit my wife who lives in a nearby village in Sierra Leone," says one soldier as he stops to wash his hands before going for his temperature check.