Authorities are investigating after 150 children developed high fever following measles vaccinations in Lingbi County, Anhui Province.

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More than 3,000 children aged 1-14 in Lingbi's Xiangyang Township were vaccinated on March 14 by the county Center for Disease Prevention and Control.

 

The township hospital reported to the county government that 32 students developed steady high fever after vaccination. But a reporter sent by a newspaper to schools in Xiangyang found the figure was at least 150. The Anhui Commerce newspaper is based in the provincial capital, Hefei.

 

Treatment continued for the victims, all primary school students, whose fevers were as high as 41 degrees Celsius. Fevers would come back about two hours after medication drips stopped, the newspaper report said.

 

Doctors from the county medical center said the victims were suffering flu and colds.

 

However, measles vaccines may cause low fever among at most 1 percent of recipients.

 

Medical workers drained the vaccines into injectors beforehand, instead of preparing a vaccination before each student, the newspaper said, citing teachers at several schools.

 

A third-grader at Wangji Primary School, to whom the newspaper gave the alias of Wang Hao, received an injection to treat his fever that morning before the vaccination.

 

Wang reportedly told a vaccination worker about it, but the worker gave him the measles shot without taking his temperature first.

 

(Shanghai Daily March 25, 2006)