Submission of "Petition on the Screening of Vaccines"
December 2003
Hitoshi Kamiya, President
The Japanese Society for Vaccinology
The Japanese Society for Vaccinology considers that it is important to swiftly proceed with the screening of vaccinations. As a committee in the board, we established the petition review committee organized by the president and comprised of the members listed below. Based on the results of investigations conducted between May and December 2003, including seminars held by the engineering official in the screening center, we summarized our request in the petition below and submitted it to Japanese Health Minister Sakaguchi at the office of the Minister on December 24.
Petition Review Committee Members (titles omitted)
Yoshichika Arakawa, Tetsuya Oka, Nobuhiko Okabe, Takehiro Togashi,
So Hashizume, Kiyoshi Horiuchi, Masato Tashiro
December 2003
Attn: Mr. Chikara Sakaguch
Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare
The Japanese Society for Vaccinology
Hitoshi Kamiya, President
Petition on the Screening of Vaccines
As an opinion leader of Japan on vaccinology, the Japanese Society for Vaccinology requests the following concerning the screening of vaccines.
- We are lacking integration since we do not have any division that controls the entire vaccine policies, such as their political measures, screening, effects, and information-gathering activities after sales. In order to further implement vaccine policies in Japan, we seek your support in establishing a controlling division.
- As you already know, it takes a long time to develop vaccines. We request efforts to ensure expeditious screening (at least within a year) for the necessary vaccines that are used worldwide and needed by Japan.
- We are fully aware that highly competent professionals are working on this issue at the screening center, but it is true that not many personnel are specialists in this area with a medical license. We would like you to recruit physicians in addition to pharmacists who are familiar with vaccinology.
- Additionally, the production of vaccines requires technical assessments on their quality management as well as production control. Thus, we would like you to recruit personnel from the National Institute of Infectious Diseases as a screening member.
- From the perspective of the national defense industry, vaccines, such as varicella vaccine and new influenza vaccine, are important for the nation to protect citizens from infections. However, it is very costly to develop them and almost impossible to be competitive in the overseas market. Without the government's support for development, Japan will be unable to make any progress in this area. We would like you to investigate the situation and make the necessary improvements.
We, as the Japanese Society for Vaccinology, request the Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare to consider improvements to the above issues.