Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province started on Thursday a probe into a herbal injection after the country's drug watchdog said three deaths were possibly linked to it.

China's State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) said Thursday that three patients in Anhui, Yunnan and Jiangsu provinces had died in September after using the drug which was labeled as shuanghuanglian, a herbal drug made by Duoduo Pharmaceutcal Company, Ltd. in Heilongjiang.

SFDA said possibilities that their deaths were caused by the drug could not be ruled out.

Experts from China's Ministry of health and SFDA had set up an investigation team to probe into the case.

The company had been ordered to suspend selling the drug and hospitals and chemists were urged to stop using the injection, said Li Jun, spokesman for Heilongjiang Food and Drug Administration.

In February, another factory in Heilongjiang was shut down after its shuanghuanglian injection caused adverse effects on three patients and the death of one of them.

(Xinhua News Agency September 18, 2009)