Quality control and evaluation of vaccines in China

I was born in Luoyang in 1963, a city in China with thousands of years’ history. The city is the eastern starting point of the Silk Road (BC 206–260 AD), a famous and long trade route in human history. Living in this ancient city, I grew up under the influence and impact of Chinese traditional culture. When I was a teenager, I once read a book “Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon” (Huang Di Nei Jing, written about 5th century BC), which is the oldest extant classic of traditional Chinese medicine. I was immediately attracted by an idea in it “prevention is better than cure,” which is mean that the highest level of medical treatment is not to cure a disease, but to prevent the occurrence of diseases. I think even in the modern society, this is still the highest realm of medical treatment. Inspired by this view, I developed a strong interest in preventive medicine and majored in it during my college years. With an increasingly deeper understanding of preventive medicine, I gradually realized the importance of epidemiology and vaccinology in preventing infectious diseases. Fortunately, in 1991 I entered the group of professor Zhuang Hui in Peking University Health Science Center for a doctorate degree in epidemiology. Professor Zhuang who is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering not only taught me how to do research, but showed me how to act like a scientist. I benefited greatly from his rigorous attitudes toward life and research. During this period, I focused on transmission routes of hepatitis C virus which made me increasingly recognized the great harm of hepatitis in China. It is well known that more than three-quarters of all liver cancer cases are thought to be attributable to hepatitis B or C. In China about 110 000 people die from liver cancer each year, accounting 45% of the total number of deaths caused by liver cancer worldwide.