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Chinese hospitals used 'fake plasma' on patients
Reuters
June 11, 2007 at 10:06 AM EDT

BEIJING - Eighteen big hospitals in northeastern China have been using
fake human albumin, or plasma protein, to treat patients, state
television reported in the latest food and medicine scandal to hit the
country.

In regular checks made by the food and drug administration in Jilin
province, seven of 36 batches of the albumin, fed into the bloodstream
by drip, contained zero protein.

"There was no protein component," Xu Fei, deputy chief of Jilin food
and drug inspection department, told China Central Television. "It
will not have the benefit it should have. We can say it is an out-and-
out fake product."

Experts said that use of the fake drip could put lives at risk for
those already seriously ill.

Eighteen hospitals and 39 drug trading companies were found to be
using the fake human albumin, which led to huge profits because of its
low production cost.

The State Food and Drug Administration said the Jilin probe was part
of a wider, national crackdown on fake human albumin, a concentrate of
plasma proteins used to treat shock from blood loss, burns and low
protein levels in the body.

"After several months of hard work, the project to bring order to the
human albumin (market) has now achieved results," it said in a
statement on its Web site (www.sda.gov.cn).

"Jilin, Shanxi, Qinghai, Hubei, Shandong, Liaoning, Chongqing and
Xinjiang have investigated a series of fake albumin cases, and have
effectively cleaned up the market," the statement added, referring to
the parts of China where the probe focused on.

It did not say if anyone had died or fallen ill from using the fake
products, and provided details of the crackdown only for Jilin.

There, it said, an underground network selling the fake plasma had
been smashed.

Some of the hospitals called by Reuters were not immediately available
for comment.

Billions of dollars worth of counterfeit and substandard goods, from
fake liquor and medicines to luxury handbags, are produced every year
in China.

In the most recent scandal, U.S. consumers were alarmed by a spate of
pet deaths blamed on tainted wheat gluten and rice protein exported
from China, as well as reports of toxins and disease in other Chinese
exports.

A Chinese-made medicine ingredient also killed at least 100 people in
Panama, according to a report in the New York Times.

In one of the most highly publicized scandals, China revealed in 2004
that at least 13 babies had died from malnutrition in the eastern
province of Anhui after being fed fake baby formula.

Nearly 200,000 people die each year in China from improper use of
legitimate drugs, according to Jin Shiming, a committee member of the
Guangdong Provincial Science and Technological Association.

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