John Garnaut
The Sydney Morning Herald
05/12/2010
A bold Chinese editor has been removed from his post after his newspaper exposed how shoddy handling of health vaccines may have led to the deaths and serious illnesses of children in Shanxi province.
Wang Keqin, a renowned investigative journalist, reported on March 17 how a gross failure to refrigerate vaccines had led to the deaths of four children and the illness of at least 74 others in Shanxi province.
The vaccines, prepared by a collaboration of private businessman and health officials, had been deliberately left unrefrigerated to prevent stickers from peeling off, the report said.
The stickers displayed the government’s quality assurance.
“I can give you some new information,” said Wang, at the headquarters of China Economic Times in Beijing’s northern suburbs at 11am Beijing time.
“We’ve just had a meeting and our chief editor has been removed,” he said.
Chief editor Bao Yuehang was also the publisher and Communist Party secretary of the newspaper, which employs 400 people and is controlled by the State Council’s Development Research Centre.
He will now swap jobs with Han Lijun, the head of a publishing company at the research centre which employs 20 people, said colleagues who attended this morning’s briefing.
Mr Bao had worked at the China Economic Times for 15 years until today and had staunchly defended Wang’s report.
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