Big shortage of vaccines, immunisation could be hit

Government is apparently spending nearly 40 lakhs per ` month as staff salary for CPA, sources said. Since last July, the government has spent nearly 2.5 ` crores on salaries and perks for the CPA staff.

Sending alarm bells ringing, India is likely to face a huge shortage of vaccines. The government’s central procurement agency, that was due to float tenders in February to buy ` 1,000 crores in drugs and vaccines for the Universal Immunisation Programme, has said it is unable to do so, and left it to the health ministry to get them. The CPA claimed since “there are not enough warehouses to store these vaccines and drugs”, it will be not be able to procure them.

The immunisation programme could be badly hit as it may run short of seven critical vaccines, including Diphtheria Pertussis Tetanus ( DPT), Polio, Measels, Bacillus Calmette- Guerin ( BCG), Hepatitis B, Japanese Encephalitis ( JE) and Haemophilus influenzae type b ( Hib).

Union health secretary Lov Verma has asked his officials to start the process of procurement without any further delay.

The government is now carrying out the immunisation programme across the country with the available stocks. “At times the demand for a particular vaccine goes up in some states,” an official said. “This could become a problem as we are running short of vaccines.” If Centre fails to procure fresh stocks in a few months it may fail to supply states with fresh quota.

If the Union health ministry fails to procure fresh stocks of vaccines in a couple of months it could possibly fail to supply the states with fresh quota.

Though the health ministry intends to step up the process, things can get tricky as it now will have to re- start the entire process by floating fresh tenders. This could be time consuming.

It was further pointed out if Indian companies run short of a particularly vaccine, the government will have to knock on the doors of multinationals. “For this we need to pay more,” health ministry officials said. Incidentally India is the biggest producer and exporter of these vaccines and drugs.

It may be noted that to facilitate the health ministry in procuring and distributing quality medicines and medical equipment, the Union Cabinet had cleared setting up of CPA in 2011. However, owing to red tapisim and bureaucratic delays, the CPA finally became operative only last year. As for expenditure, government is apparently spending nearly ` 40 lakhs per month as staff salary for CPA, sources said. Since last July, the government has spent nearly ` 2.5 crores on salaries and perks for the CPA staff.