Health ministry not to suspend immunisation programme

LUCKNOW: ‘‘The routine immunisation (RI) drive across the country will not be stalled because of the incident in Mohanlalganj tehsil of Lucknow,’’ said a senior Union health ministry official. The official, who is here to probe the death of four children during an immunisation programme in Mohanlalganj on Saturday, said: ‘‘There are no complaints from anywhere else... prima-facie there is nothing wrong with the vaccines... Also, vaccines from the same batch were administered to other children and nothing happened to them... there is no need to stop the RI drive.” However, the drive will remain suspended in Mohanlalganj, he added.

Four children, all below two years of age, died soon after vaccines were administered to them under a routine immunisation drive initiated by the UP government. While two children were given vaccines for measles and BCG, the other two were administered hepatitis-B vaccines along with the BCG shots. All children died within an hour after showing convulsion like symptoms. Since the vaccines are supplied by the health ministry and the same batch of vaccines is sent to other parts of India, there were reports that the drive may be temporarily suspended.

Meanwhile, samples of all the vaccines in question, their dilutants, open vials, syringes have been sealed for chemical analysis. Drug inspector, ministry of health, Abhishek Chawla was busy making inventories for every sample to be sent. ‘‘We may send the samples to a competent lab in the country. Central Drug Laboratory, Kolkata, could be an obvious choice. Analysis made by it are final and accepted in the court of law,’’ Chawla told TOI. He said vaccines that were used in the field have been collected as samples under the Drug Act, while the ones at the vaccine cold-chain centre have been taken as survey samples. The report, he said, takes at least a month in the normal course, but if sent as a priority, it may come soon.