Encephalitis strikes in Uttar Pradesh again, govt blames defective vaccines

Hundreds of children in remote parts of east Uttar Pradesh (UP) are sure to lose their lives to the killer Japanese encephalitis (JE) again, even as the state and central governments squabble and trade charges over the delay in preventive vaccination and the expiry of lakhs of vials which could have saved precious lives.

A preliminary inquiry by the health department has revealed that over 50% of the vaccines sent by the Centre could be defective. Also, the supplies of the preventive vaccination, which should have been completed by March, have come now.

Health department sources said the vaccines sent to UP had already been rejected by the West Bengal government. Vaccines nearing expiry were imported from a Chinese company in an unseemly hurry, the sources said. “A thorough inquiry could expose a big scam,” an official said.

“The Centre is squarely to blame for this failure,” UP’s director general, health, RR Bharti said. He said the state had asked the Centre for 74 lakh vaccines but only 15 lakh had been supplied. “These too have been delayed beyond their time of utility, and a major portion of the stock is unusable,” he added.

A Central government official, however, said the UP health department had acted ham-handedly. He pointed out that the vaccines needed to be kept at a particular temperature and transported carefully, and that the state officials had failed to follow the drill to perfection.

While authorities are busy scoring brownie points, the seven districts of east UP in Gorakhpur and Basti divisions known to be the worst affected by JE, have begun to experience the affliction. JE patients are queuing up at the BRD Medical College in Gorakhpur, but the numbers could go up after the rains.

“Thousands of lives have been lost over the past three decades but we still can’t buy JE vaccination across the counter, though the vaccine for swine flu is available in the market,” an expert quipped, insisting on anonymity.

The anguish is not misplaced. The disease, carried by pigs and transferred to humans by mosquitoes, kills hundreds of children up to age 15 every year. It has claimed over 2,000 lives in the past five years alone. The toll was 1,135 in 2005, 437 in 2006, 547 in 2007, 453 in 2008 and 363 in 2009. What is worse is that these are only figures reported in government hospitals. A large number of deaths in remote rural areas go unreported.

RN Singh, who runs an NGO called Encephalitis Eradication Movement (EEM) said the government’s vaccination drive is ridiculous. He said that most of the vaccines have been rendered unusable due to heat. “The drive should be carried out only if health department officials and ministers agree to let these vaccines to be administered to their children first.”