Panel slams closure of three govt vaccine cos

NEW DELHI: A health ministry-appointed committee termed the reason for the closure of three state-run vaccine making units in 2008, which resulted in occasional shortage of preventive medicines in the country, as illegal. The decision to close the units were partly based on views of World Health Organisation (WHO).

“No matter how useful WHO’s advice may be, the national (drug) regulatory authority’s sovereign function cannot be discharged in partnership with an international organisation,” the committee said in its report last month. The committee was set up in September 2009 and headed by former Union health secretary Javed Chowdhury.

The government suspended licences of the three companies in January 2008 after WHO threatened to derecognise Drug Controller General of India ( DCGI) if it did not suspend licences of CRI (Kasauli), PII (Conoor) and BCGVL (Guindy) for violating manufacturing norms.

The government had in the past rejected such requests by WHO.These units produced the BCG vaccine to prevent childhood tuberculosis, DPT, oral polio vaccine, diphtheria-tetanus toxoid and tetanus toxoid vaccines besides the measles vaccine and supplied as much as 31.7 crore dosages for the year ended March 2007. The closure made the government dependent on private suppliers for its public immunisation programme.

The DCGI order that suspended the manufacturing licences of these units has to be treated as null and void, said the committee in its report.