Since mid-November, a vaccine scandal has bombarded the headlines. Infants from Hunan, Guangdong, Sichuan and other provinces, after being inoculated with recombinant hepatitis B vaccine (HBV), which was mainly produced by Shenzhen BioKangtai, have been reported as suffering from suspected adverse reactions, some fatal.

On January 3, National Health and Family Planning Commission and China Food and Drug Administration released a joint statement, saying that no problems have been found with BioKangtai vaccines, and all 17 deaths have been investigated. The authorities said they found no link between the vaccine and the deaths.

But the public are still pondering seriously and discussing fiercely whether they should refuse to be vaccinated, and an anti-vaccine movement is slowly gathering momentum.

An online survey conducted by the portal website Sina showed over 88 percent of nearly 15,000 respondents don't think vaccines are safe. Meanwhile, the latest data from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention shows that after the vaccine scandal, newborns' HBV rate has shrank by 30 percent, while other vaccines by 15 percent. 

What can we do to alleviate public anxiety? There is a Chinese proverb saying "we should not stop eating for fear of choking." Vaccination has been verified as the most effective method in preventing hepatitis B for years, and cannot simply be thrown away because of the unfortunate deaths. We need to restore our sanity and see vaccination in a grand view.

Some health experts reiterate that adverse reactions have multiple inducing factors, and we cannot define whether vaccine has genuinely caused the death. Some babies may have already been sick, but the vaccine prompted further symptoms.

If the adverse reaction rate is within a reasonable range, normally under 1:50,000 to 1:100,000, vaccine can be considered as safe.

In China, neonatal mortality is about 466 per day and 75 percent of these babies would have been compulsorily vaccinated with HBV. This means about 350 babies might die every day who have received the HBV shot, but it certainly doesn't mean the vaccine kills them, only that the vaccine is common. The reasons behind every death should be examined carefully before a final conclusion is made.

Vaccination is still an important tool to prevent epidemics. In 1974, 36 people from the UK suffered a serious reaction after being injected with the DPT vaccine, which protects against three different illnesses. Later  the DPT vaccine was suspended from usage immediately, and then vaccine receiving rate dropped markedly from 81 percent to 31 percent, however, what was followed soon was that the infection rate for those illness increased sharply from 1:100,000 to 200:100,000.

Although China's vaccine supervision system passed the WHO assessment in 2012, we still need to build a comprehensive quick-response vaccine adverse reaction scrutiny network.

The health authorities should scrutinize and record adverse reactions closely, and make the results transparent to the public, in case rumors lead to some unexpected results.

Use of the BioKangtai vaccine was suspended after the fourth death was reported by the media, a move criticized as too late to stop more deaths. In Japan and Canada, once an adverse reaction case is spotted, all batches of the suspect vaccines can be suspended and recalled in a short time thanks to their nationwide scrutiny network. 

The public is thirsty for a sense of safety, but vaccine abandonment isn't the best solution. We need a calmer head and better efforts to make our vaccines trustworthy.

Lei Xiangping, editor with the news desk of China Radio International.