There has been a scandal on the international drug market the other day, which is directly related to us. It is about GlaxoSmithKline PLC, which will pay unprecedented $3 billion fine, because its diabetes medicine has caused 100 thousand people in the US to have heart attacks; there have also been cases of death. Besides, this company has produced unapproved antidepressants for children, has paid kickbacks to doctors and now faces a trial.
There is another interesting fact in this story. The thing is that two years ago, in Armenia a 5-month-old infant, Anahit Isajanyan, became an epileptic after an injection on April 26. Anahit’s relatives claim that the child had been healthy before the injection, after which she immediately had an epileptic attack. And our Ministry of Healthcare, Gayane Sahakyan, the head of the National Program for Immunoprevention, in particular, assured Aravot that the parents said, to put it mildly, “nonsense,” that such a thing couldn’t happen because of the vaccine, because Anahit was injected with the new pentavalent vaccine, which had been produced in Hungary by a well-known company, GlaxoSmithKline. The specialists of the ministry maintained that it was not right to quit a whole national program on the basis of one family, although the issue here is not only Anahit. A child from Byureghavan picked a flower on her way to a polyclinic for injection and a few days after that she died. During one year, in 2009-2010, our children were injected with 69 720 doses of vaccine, because of which there were 2983 cases of negative post-injection effects.
The parents of the child who became an epileptic have inquired and found out that this pentavalent vaccine have been boycotted by the European countries and only a few small countries like ours around the world use it. However, Gayane Sahakyan assures that vaccine of GlaxoSmithKline PLC has passed the prequalification of WHO and has gotten a WHO certificate, therefore WHO has no suspicions that it can be dangerous for Armenian children. One cannot help but doubt these words and guarantees today, because we are dealing with a company, which has caused 100 thousand people to have heart attacks and has done business at the expense of children and to which we actually entrust our children’s health.
Hripsime JEBEJYAN
