Public health experts said the situation reflected India’s poor budget allocation for health programmes
An impending price rise that is likely to raise India’s budget for a key vaccine by less than Rs 100 crore has prompted the government to seek an international donor’s help at a time it has built a showpiece statue for an estimated Rs 3,000 crore.
Public health experts said the situation reflected India’s poor budget allocation for health programmes.
The health ministry is scrambling to avert a possible stock-out of the injectable inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV) amid a global supply shortage and a decision by Sanofi, vaccine maker and the sole IPV supplier to the Indian government, to revise prices.
A stock-out would mean the government would be forced to temporarily stop immunising infants with IPV, a vaccine critical to maintaining India’s polio-free status and introduced in the public immunisation programme in 2015.
The IPV does not carry the risks of vaccine-associated polio paralysis or vaccine-derived polioviruses that come with the oral poliovirus vaccine. It’s a key tool in the global polio eradication effort.
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