The government seems to have no plan to produce vaccines from its own vaccine manufacturing units namely BCG Vaccine Laboratory in Chennai, Pasteur Institute of India, Coonoor and Central Research Institute at Kasauli. It has decided to procure almost all the vaccines required for the country’s national immunization programme from the private vaccine companies with no check on their quoted prices. The companies like Serum Institute of Pune, Bharat Biotech, Green Signal Biopharma, etc. are some of the main suppliers of vaccines to the national programme now. It is more than three years after the Union health ministry headed by Dr Anbumani Ramadoss ordered the closure of three public sector vaccine manufacturing units. After the closure of the vaccine units there has been a steady rise in the prices of most of the widely used vaccines in the country. With this, the expenditure on universal immunization programme had also increased substantially. The health ministry after the closure of the vaccine units had claimed that it could negotiate with the private players and manage to procure vaccines at lower prices. But, a scrutiny of prices of vaccines procured by the government from the private players clearly shows that the rates for the year of 2009-10 were much higher than the rates in the previous years. In fact the private players used to offer the vaccines at competitive prices before the closure of the PSU units as per the information available from the health ministry itself.
The Parliamentary standing committee on health and family welfare, headed by Amar Singh, had taken serious objection to the continuing delay on the part of the health ministry in resuming operations of the three closed PSU units. The committee felt that the suspension of manufacturing licences of the three units should be revoked at the earliest and they should restart their production. Considering the prices at which vaccines are offered by the private players, the government should not have allowed any delay in this matter.
The government cannot afford to ignore a suggestion like this from a Parliamentary panel. But, the health ministry did not bother to undertake the modernization of the vaccine units during last three years even when shortages of vaccines were being reported by state governments. At a time when multinational drug companies are taking over the pharmaceutical industry of the country, the Central government has a critical role to play in supplying at least some of the essential drugs and vaccines to the poorer sections of the society. As it is, there is a steady rise in the prices of most of the widely prescribed medicines as majority of the drugs are outside the price control.
