Purchase will be used in a program targeted at children between 18 months and 12 years.
The Chinese Ministry of Public Health placed an ¥87 million ($12.8 million) order for Sinovac Biotech’s inactivated hepatitis A vaccine, Healive. The vaccine will be used in a campaign targeted at children from 18 months to 12 years in nine provinces across the country, says the company.
Sinovac is a China-based biopharmaceutical company focused on producing and developing vaccines for use against human infectious disease. In 2008, Sinovac collaborated with the Ministry of Health to provide hepatitis A vaccine to people living in the Sichuan province who were affected by the major earthquake there. Sinovac says that it recently completed expansion on a filing and packaging plant and that its annual capacity is now 20 million doses.
“We are very pleased to have established a public market for our inactivated hepatitis A vaccine, Healive, through this supply agreement with the MOH, as we are focusing our efforts in 2009 on both the public and private pay markets,” says Weidong Yin, chairman, president, and CEO of Sinovac.
