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 Rs1,000 crores in drugs and vaccines for the Universal Immunisation Progra-mme, 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.