(NaturalNews) As news of an illegal vaccine distribution scandal in China continues to emerge, outraged citizens are demanding to know why the government waited so long to inform the public that their children were at risk.

According to the government, an illegal vaccine ring in operation since 2011, distributed $88 million worth of vaccines that had expired or been improperly refrigerated. This placed all children who got the shots at risk of disability or death. It is not known how many children were harmed by the illegal vaccines.

The government has known about the ring since April 2015, but did not announce its knowledge until this March.

"It's been nearly a year and then they reveal this!" said one angry user on the micro-blogging network Sina Weibo. "Isn't this genocide? Words cannot express how angry I am!"
 

Unknown how many children harmed

According to state officials, the illegal ring was headed up by a mother and daughter – recently arrested in Shandong province – who illegally purchased vaccines from more than 100 separate pharmaceutical salesmen, some of them unlicensed, then resold them to disease control and prevention centers or to unauthorized sales agents for marked up prices. The ring's operations spanned 24 provinces and cities.

According to news sources, the mother is a former doctor who had been fired from a public hospital in 2009 for illegally selling vaccines, and sentenced to three years in prison. Her daughter is also a medical school graduate.

Police have carried out more than 20 raids to seize improperly stored vaccines sold as part of the ring. Following the arrests, China's Food and Drugs Administration asked local offices to trace the path the illegal vaccines took in order to help identify patients who might have been affected. The effort has already implicated nine vaccine wholesalers in six provinces for filing false paperwork to conceal their buyers' identities.