Editorial»
Virulent vials
APR 10 -
A little over a week ago, the government prohibited the use of the pentavalent vaccination after harmful ‘suspended particles’ were found in the vials imported into the country by the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) through another UN body, the World Health Organisation (WHO). The five-in-one vaccine is given to children under a year old to protect them against five potential killers — diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, Hepatitis B, and Haemophilic influenza. But ‘manufacturing defects’ in the vaccine can prove fatal too. Five children lost their lives in Sri Lanka last year after being inoculated with vaccines with similar suspended particles.
Alarmingly, the defective lot of vaccines was distributed across 25 districts in the country between April-November last year and in the remaining 50 districts after November. There is no record of how many children have been inoculated with the potentially dangerous concoction. Government health experts are breathing a sign of relief as the vaccine seems to have done no significant harm — no dangerous side-effect of the vaccine has been reported in the country so far. They have also been quick to point the finger at the international agencies involved in vaccine import.
It cannot be a coincidence, in their view, that vaccines from the same faulty batch were dispatched to many African countries, thus fanning the age-old suspicion of the rich world trying to ‘experiment’ on poor people. To its credit, WHO has vowed to replace all 131,000 old vials, which emanated from an Indian manufacturer, with a new lot from a South Korean manufacturer.
The vaccine scandal comes hot on the heels of another infamous incident involving a UN agency, the World Food Programme (WFP). Last August, the Department of Food Technology and Quality Control found the foodstuff supplied by WFP in the Mid West to be ‘inedible’. As we have said in this space before, Nepali officials as well as politicians are quick to blame international organisations working in the country in order to hide their own failings. While we maintain that position, it would also be unwise (and potentially dangerous) to ignore genuine mistakes, made willingly or otherwise, of world bodies like WHO, which has, as in the latest vaccine case, undoubtedly failed to live up to its high standard of quality control.
As of this writing, WHO is reportedly looking into the incident. It is vital for its credibility that it gets to the heart of the matter, make the findings of the investigation public and punish the guilty for a grave error — one which put the lives of countless Nepali children in danger. Meanwhile, the process of replacement of the old lot, which has already been delayed by a week, needs to be expedited so that the children scheduled to take their periodic dose do not miss their vaccination deadlines.
Posted on: 2010-04-11 10:18
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