Get full access to one story every week, and to summaries of all other stories. Just create a free account

In Chengalpattu, about 70 km from the southern Indian city of Chennai, is a cluster of buildings spread over 100 acres. These house manufacturing lines, quality-control lines and other units, all set up to manufacture vaccines. This is the Integrated Vaccine Complex (IVC)—the Indian government’s one-stop solution to be self-reliant in producing vaccines to feed its national immunisation programme. A plan into which it has pumped about Rs 600 crore ($84.28 million) so far.

Only, IVC has not produced a single vaccine. In seven years.

Before we get to why, let’s go back over a decade. To January 2008.

Three Indian public sector undertakings (PSUs) were closed after the World Health Organisation questioned the quality of the vaccines produced at these centres. Following a hue and cry over the absence of a national vaccine maker, the government in 2012 announced a plan to set up a state-of-the-art unit in three years. The IVC was to be the nodal centre for supply, research and manufacture, and the supplier of 585 million doses, or three-fourths of the national immunisation programme’s vaccine requirement.

India, in 2017, under its Rs 9,451 crore ($1.44 billion) national immunisation programme, allocated approximately $25 per child for vaccines and operational costs. Children born in India are vaccinated for 12 diseases—tuberculosis, diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, polio, measles, hepatitis B, diarrhoea, Japanese encephalitis, rubella, pneumonia, and meningitis. Of these, the vaccines the government requires the most are Oral Poliovirus vaccine (130 million doses) and Tetanus vaccine (110 million doses). The private vaccine industry estimates that, on an average, the government has a requirement of 120 million doses of each vaccine based on a birth cohort of 28 million and number of doses. A birth cohort is a group of people born during a particular period or year.

The plan for an IVC made sense then.

Except the government’s choice to carry out this ambitious plan was…a condom-maker with no experience in making vaccines. State-owned HLL Lifecare’s vaccine unit, HLL Biotech Ltd (HBL), was entrusted with constructing the IVC in three years. This despite protests from political and public parties.

Upsetting mood

HLL Lifecare is popular as the maker of MOODS condoms. The Indian government in the past purchased condoms for its social programmes from the company but stopped doing so a few years ago after which the company went into losses

An epidemiologist with Shimla’s State Institute of Health and Family Welfare, Dr Omesh Kumar Bharti, who has worked on anti-rabies vaccines, said, “The IVC was opposed by many people.

AUTHOR

Suraksha P

Suraksha writes on Healthcare and Pharma. She has been a journalist for five years, reporting for The New Indian Express in Bengaluru and Chennai, and The Times of India, Delhi. In her previous stints she has written on health, civic issues and education. She investigated cover up of corruption in the state health department’s think tank, narrated harrowing tales of women who underwent unwarranted hysterectomies, and wrote about how loss of biometrics came in the way of Leprosy patients getting an Aadhaar card and thereby pension. She can be reached at suraksha at the-ken dot com.

View Full Profile

Enter your email address to read this story

To read this, you’ll need to register for a free account which will also give you access to our stories and newsletters

Or use your email ID