Headlines in Cuban Health
Washington Fines US Company for Selling Children’s Vaccines to Cuba

In early June, Chiron Corp was slapped with a $168,500 fine by the U.S. Treasury Department for having shipped vaccines to Cuba for infants and children from its plants in Germany and Italy in 1999-2002. The vaccines included those for polio, haemophilus influenza, flu, rabies and a vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella.

The fine issued by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is the second highest civil penalty that is has imposed this year. In April, OFAC fined Alpha Pharmaceutical Inc. $198,711 for illegally exporting pharmaceutical products to Cuba from 1998 to 2003.

The vaccines sold by Chiron are employed in Cuba’s comprehensive immunization program that has eradicated polio, measles, rubella and mumps, and diphtheria, among other diseases (see Spotlight this issue).

In view of the success of Cuba’s comprehensive program, it gives some pause to note that the sanction against Chiron comes only two months after the Bush administration unveiled its program to “aid the Cuban people” in which it promised that once the current Cuban government is removed, the United States will launch a program to assure that all children under 5 years of age will be vaccinated against the very diseases prevented by these vaccines.

Further, OFAC has since granted Chiron a license to ship the vaccines, raising a question as to why it was fined so severely in the first place. Under previous administrations, inadvertent failure to complete the requisite paperwork would have provoked a mere warning.