Asia Cast for Thursday 15th October
In this Bulletin – Vaccine safety fears in Chinas Shanxi Province; – Five arrested in Singapore for sticking up posters in park;and – UN releases report on hunger ahead of World Food Day. But first, heres our SOH focus on China ********************** At least three people have been killed as heavy rains and strong winds from tropical storm Parma lashed the southern Chinese island of Hainan. About 36000 people have been forced to leave their homes. Parma landed on Monday destroying hundreds of houses and affecting millions of people as extreme weather conditions pounded the country. The storm is weakening as it moves deeper inland. Parma hit the northern Philippines last week, killing hundreds of residents and flooding vast areas of agriculture. ********************** An industry insider has told NTDTV that unsafe procedures by a private company that bought the rights to manage Shanxi Provinces vaccines has put lives at risk. In 2006, the Health Department sold the management rights of vaccines to Hua Wei. But Chen Taoan from the Shanxi Center for Disease Control told NTDTV that Hua Wei failed to store the vaccines properly, exposing them to high heat for hours on end. Chen, who has tried to expose the practice since 2007, says up to 15 million spoiled vaccines have been used since 2006. There have been reports of deaths and severe illness among children given the vaccines. ********************** And now for the rest of todays Asia Cast ********************** In a case …