Hong Kong tourism gets moot shot in the arm
Print Edition
MAINLANDERS are booking flights to Hong Kong to get vaccinations there for their children and sometimes for themselves. The offshore trips reflect growing anxiety about the quality and availability of vaccines in China after a much-publicized scandal.
APART from Disneyland, shopping malls and pharmacies with infant milk powder, Hong Kong’s popularity as a destination for mainland visitors has taken on a new dimension — vaccinations.
Families seeking inoculations in Hong Kong cite the shortage of certain vaccines on the mainland and distrust in the quality of those available here after a vaccine scandal in March.
Diana Liu, 28, a private company employee with a 2-month-old boy, said obtaining the shots in Hong Kong has been a popular topic on a mothers’ social website to which she belongs. The online group was shocked, she said, by reports of a family in Shandong Province that illegally sold hundreds of millions of yuan in improperly handled vaccines over a five-year period.
“We were all terrified when the news came out,” said Liu. “Though subsequent reports said the illegal vaccine wasn’t poisonous, it was ineffective. Infant health and safety are always of paramount importance to mothers.”
She began heeding the online discussions about sourcing vaccines in Hong Kong when her baby began requiring a series of routine inoculations.
Zhou Beili, 34, a trading company employee, had her 3-month-old daughter vaccinated with Prevenar-13 in Hong Kong in late February. Prevenar-13 is a vaccine that helps prevent diseases caused by the Streptococcus pneumonia bacteria.
Zhou said she went to Hong Kong because this particular imported vaccine wasn’t easily available on the mainland. An earlier version, Prevenar-7, is ceased supply on the mainland market because of a licensing expiration. Zhou was turned down several times when trying to get her baby the vaccination in clinics around where she lives.
Prevenar-7 was introduced into China in 2008 and available in about 60 cities. It was placed on a government pharmaceutical list where it was not available free to families.
“It was a choiceless choice,” said Zhou. “I would not have traveled all the way to Hong Kong if I could have gotten the same vaccine here in Shanghai.”
With the help of a doctor friend in Hong Kong, she made appointments at a government-run clinic there to get her daughter the four-shot series. The baby had received one shot and is going to have the next three.
Each jab cost about 1,000 yuan (US$153), which is similar with costs on the mainland. However, roundtrip flights and accommodation cost Zhou 6,000 yuan.
“We didn’t take time to do sightseeing things because I didn’t want my baby to be tired out,” Zhou said. “We had to watch for any signs of problems immediately after the vaccinations.”
Vaccination tourism may be curtailed now.
Hong Kong recently slapped a limit on the number of nonresident children eligible to receive vaccinations at government-run clinics. Local authorities feared the vaccine scandal on the mainland would create a rush of families seeking inoculations in Hong Kong.
According to the announcement, Hong Kong’s 31 maternal and child health centers will accept only 120 new nonresident children for vaccinations every month. The mainlanders will be given appointments only when there is spare capacity and will have to pay higher fees.
The World Health Organization, headed by a former health secretary of Hong Kong, said it’s really not necessary for parents to seek vaccinations in Hong Kong because the general quality of domestically produced vaccines is trustworthy.
Dr Jiang Zaifeng, a registered traditional Chinese medicine physician based in Hong Kong, has helped a number of mainland friends seeking vaccination appointments in Hong Kong. The numbers seeking his help increased after the recent vaccine scandal.
Jiang said he doesn’t think the new government limits on nonresident vaccinations will deter many mainland parents since many of them choose to go to privately run clinics for the inoculations.
However, he said he was surprised recently when a private clinic where he wanted to make an appointment for a friend’s baby told him it was running short on vaccine supplies.
“I didn’t expect the shortage,” he said. “In the past, I had no trouble making appointments. But now, I have had to call several clinics on behalf of parents. I tried several today, and they all told me that they were out of supply.”
Infant inoculations aren’t the only motivation for mainlanders seeking vaccinations in Hong Kong. Many women are seeking vaccinations against HPV, human papillomavirus, which can cause uterine and other cancers.
Shirley Zhang, a 30-year-old finance worker, has already had two shots of HPV vaccine in Hong Kong and is planning a trip for her third and final injection.
“Nobody knows whether they will get cervical cancer or not,” said Zhang. “Since there are proven ways to prevent it, I believe it worth getting vaccinated.”
Zhang and several friends always arrange their vaccination appointment over weekends, allowing them to do some shopping and eating out on the side.
“I know that some private clinics in Shanghai also provide such vaccines, but I still chose to go to Hong Kong,” she said. “I don’t trust the vaccine quality here. Since this vaccine is not legalized on the mainland, so all those available on the market now must have come from illegal channels.”
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