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he Union government’s flawed vaccine procurement policy may jeopardise the effectiveness of the much-talked-about Universal Immunisation Programme (UIP) in the country and would put the recently revived public sector vaccine manufacturing facilities in dire straits, it is learnt.
When the government downed shutters of Central Research Institute (CRI) in Kasauli, BCG Vaccine Laboratory (BCGVL) in Guindy and Pasteur Institute of India (PII) in Coonor in 2008 citing non-compliance with statutory norms, former Union health secretary SP Shukla and a group of health sector NGOs moved the top court alleging that the units were closed to benefit private manufacturers. Thanks to the public interest litigation (PIL) and a constant monitoring by the top court, the units were revived by 2016 with state-of the-art facility. The health ministry spent Rs. 279 crore to upgrade the laboratories and boost their production capacity.
However, the government is still neglecting the production of vaccines in the public sector laboratories and procuring products from private companies despite higher rates, say activists. The move is making public sector units nonfunctional and unproductive and forces them to look for private buyers for survival. Prior to suspension, the public sector supplied 85 per cent of all universal vaccines procured by the government. Today, over 90 per cent of the government purchases are from private sector. Moreover, new vaccines and their combinations of doubtful efficacy and safety are being introduced in the universal immunisation programme, they added.
The data on public and private sector vaccine production and supply obtained from the National Health Profile 2017 report vindicates the activists’ stance. For instance, in 2014-15 and 2015-16, when the government demanded 321.58 lakh doses of DPT from private sector manufacturers, only 188.4 and 75 lakh doses respectively of the same vaccine were procured from the public sector. The figures reveal that the same is true for many other products.
The vaccines procured include BCG, which is primarily used against tuberculosis, DPT which is used for diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough) and tetanus, DT which protects young children from diphtheria, tetanus, and whooping cough and TT, the tetanus vaccine.
The NGOs fighting a legal battle to resolve the issue faced a setback last week when the Supreme Court refused to recall its earlier order in which it had disposed of a plea seeking an enquiry into alleged negligence by the government in running public sector laboratories. The PIL was filed by Shukla and representatives of the All India Drug Action Network (Aidan), Low Cost Standard Therapeutics (LOCOST), Medico Friend Circle (MFC) and Society for Scientific Values (SSV).
Expressing strong disappointment with the court order, Malini Aisola of Aidan told Pharmabiz “The fight is not over. A fresh petition is being considered. The government gave half truths to the court on the basis of which the case was dismissed.”
“The private sector prices kept on increasing over the years and governments vaccine procuring orders from public sector is declining at the same time. That means the revival of units is achieved due to this PIL but implementation of their full production capacity utilisation is decreasing as years pass by,” N. Sarojini from Medico Friend Circle (MFC) stated in an email interaction.
The UIP is one of the largest programmes in the world in terms of quantities of vaccines administered, number of beneficiaries and immunisation sessions and geographical extent and diversity of areas covered. But procuring a major portion of vaccines from the private sector at exorbitant rates will increase the expenditure and projected financial needs of the programme, healthcare industry observers pointed out. |
