‘Mamta Day’ turns fatal, measles vaccine kills 4 infants in Kutch

The Gujarat government’s pet ‘Mamta Day’, observed every Wednesday, proved fatal for four infants in Kutch when they died soon after being administered the anti-measles vaccines at Rambaug hospital at Adipur. The infants were in the age group of nine to ten months.

Panicked by this incident, the government stopped measles vaccination across the state till the cause of the sudden deaths of the four infants was not known. The samples of the vaccine have been collected by the Foods and Drugs Control department and sent for analysis.

The deceased infants were residents of Gandhidham. They were identified as Jitendra Datta (10 months), Yuvraj Chauhan (9 months) Vaishali Purabia (10 months) and Ravi Chaudhary (9 months). They had been taken to Rambaug government hospital at Adipur for the vaccination programme scheduled every Wednesday.  

“Yes, the unfortunate incident has occurred. But we cannot say what exactly caused the four deaths. We have sent the vial from which the measles vaccines were given to the four children, for testing. We want to know whether this was due to some human error or any contamination of the vaccine,’’ Kutch district collector M Thennarasan, who rushed to the spot, told DNA. He said as a precautionary measure they had stopped the vaccination till investigation reports came from the lab.

Thennarasan said, as part of ‘Mamta Day’, vaccines for measles were administered to seven children, out of which four developed some reaction and died. “The reaction time was very little, and the babies died within 5-10 minutes after being administered the vaccine,” he further said. The collector said that three other children who were also given the vaccine were under observation.

Bodies of the four infants have been sent for postmortem. “Only after the postmortem, we could ascertain the cause of death,” he said.

Doctors said nothing could be said about the cause of the death until full investigation was made. “But one thing is clear that measles vaccines per se cannot cause any death. The reasons could be extraneous,’’ said Dr Navin Thackar, former president of the Indian Association of Paediatrics (IAP) who was first to rush to Rambaug hospital for possible help. Rambaug hospital does not have any child specialist.

"One boy was brought to me by its parents for treatment, but the boy was already dead. I could not do anything in the matter, but knowing that other boys were also given vaccines and we could be of any help, we rushed to the hospital, but found the three also dead,'' Dr Rajesh Jeswani, former president of Gandhidham branch of IAP told DNA.

Both Thackar and Jeswani said that there could be two possible reasons for the incident. According to Jeswani, the government hospitals get their supply from Hyderabad-based manufacturing company, Human Biology Limited. Here each vial has 2.5 ml vaccine which works out to five doses each of 0.5 ml. It comes in powdered form and has to be diluted with its accompanying liquid. Here some thing must have happened.

"Another possibility is that since the vaccine came in one vial of five dozes, the full vial might not have been used and left over vaccine must have been given later on. The unused vaccine gets contaminated. These are possibilities as such things have happened in Tamil Nadu and Lucknow and this is the third such incident in the country,'' Jeswani said. Thackar is, however, sore over the stoppage of vaccination programme. "This is not the correct decision. For, Gandhidham has recorded a high number of measles cases. Three doctors reported 35 cases of measles in the last fortnight. We do not know about other cases. When measles has broken out here and it is deadly disease, it would cause more deaths for want of vaccine,'' he said.