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| Exchequer to cough up an extra Rs500m |
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Monday, February 04, 2008
Islamabad
The government will pay an additional Rs500 million out of the taxpayers’ money this year to buy preventive vaccines for children under its Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI), which is mandated to provide free vaccination against seven deadly childhood diseases.
The EPI, which used to procure these vaccines through Unicef, has now gone through a national tendering process which has cost the government coffers over 30 to 40 per cent more. The private companies which have won the tenders will be supplying vaccines for an amount which is Rs500 million in excess of the rate at which these were previously being procured by the government through Unicef.
Moreover, procurements to be made from the local market are bound to raise concerns about the efficacy of these drugs and continuity of supplies — a critical apprehension because it directly relates to protection of children against several life-threatening diseases.
The government will be buying measles, tetanus and BCG vaccines from one private company and polio vaccine from another. However, the Combo Vaccine, which provides protection against tetanus, pertussis, diphtheria, hepatitis B and haemophilus, will continue to be procured from Unicef as the vaccine is not indigenously available in Pakistan.
While there is no denying the fact that the Biological Production Division (BPD) of the National Institute of Health (NIH) does not have the capacity to meet the entire demand of EPI, a more rational approach would be to encourage public-private partnership rather than allowing one or two private companies to establish their monopoly.
“In spite of its limitations, NIH continues to cater to the country’s demand for several life-saving vaccines, and does so at a cheap and subsidised cost,” senior scientists at NIH said. The anti-snake venom being produced at NIH, for example, is being sold for Rs700 as against Rs1,100-1,400 in the open market. It is for this very reason that lobbyists whose intensive efforts have cost the national exchequer Rs500 million, are calling for closure of the public sector facility.
Senior scientists confirmed that there is no plan whatsoever to close down the production unit as it is partially meeting the country’s demand for life-saving vaccines. “It was NIH that helped save millions of lives in the aftermath of the October 2005 earthquake by vaccinating millions in the affected areas, as well as during calamities like floods,” they said. However, at the same time, NIH has no reservations whatsoever on working alongside the private sector in the area of vaccine production.
A senior official at NIH said there is no bar on the private sector working with NIH. Private sector organizations are free to develop the technology and provide quality vaccines to people. “Both complement and supplement each other,” he said. The division not only meets its own expenses through revenue generated from sale of vaccines but also partly caters to expenses of the NIH, he added.
Rather than boosting the vaccine production capacity of NIH through public-private partnership — which is producing remarkable results in various health sector programmes — efforts are in hand to somehow suspend the BPD so that private companies, which would like to have a clear field for maximisation of their profit, can operate with a free hand.
Even though vaccine-production is not the primary task of NIH, the closure of BPD is bound to deprive the poor of a cheap and subsidised source of protection against diseases. Even from a health security perspective, it is important that NIH retains it capacity of manufacturing critical vaccines because private companies may not be able to meet the country’s requirement in dire circumstances and unforeseen health emergencies.
Much to the disappointment of lobbyists, NIH is already working on a long-term plan to enhance its production capacity based on latest Good Manufacturing Practices which include production of modern cell culture rabies vaccine, anti-snake venom and others. Units pertaining to measles and tetanus vaccines are also under process through PSDP scheme.
Ironically, the government too appears inclined towards favouring private vaccine manufacturers. Only on February 1, the Ministry of Health issued a press release in which the year-wise performance of NIH in production of vaccines and sera from 2003 to 2007 had been tabulated to show its declining capacity in the area, and to emphasise that NIH is not meant to be a vaccine-production factory. The press release also stated that the basic role of NIH is to protect public health, and one wondered how vaccines could ever be separated from the agenda of health protection.
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ISSN 1563-9479 
