Friday 04 June, 2010
On Thursday India unveiled its first indigenously developed vaccine against the dreaded swine flu which claimed more than 1,000 lives in the country and over 18,000 globally. Earlier the vaccine was imported from French company, Sanofi Pasteurs that too only for health workers and other high-risk people. The vaccine was manufactured and produced by Zydus Cadilla.
Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad launched the vaccine on Thursday. Four companies have got the mandate for developing the vaccine. These are Panacea Biotech (Hyderabad), Bharat Biotech (Delhi), Cadila Healthcare (Ahmedabad), and Serum Institute (Pune). With three companies the government has already paced his orders. By the month end Serum Institute is expected to produce the vaccine.
The vaccine produced by Serum Institute would be a nasal drop while the vaccine developed by Zydus Cadilla is injectable. Drug Controller General of India, Surinder Singh told reporters, “The nasal vaccine would be de-activated vaccine while the injectable one is an activated one”. Azad said he would write to the Chief Minister and health minister of all states to use the vaccine on their health workers as much as they can and further requested people to use the vaccine, which would be available at Rs 350 per dose from Friday onwards.
Chairman and Managing Director of Cadilla, Pankaj Patel, said, the vaccine has been clinically tested on 269 people. In the first batch it is estimated that around 4.5 lakh doses will be available in the market. Singh highlighted that the vaccine does not possess any serious side effects except for slight stomach upset, local pain and fever. The health minister asserted though the H1N1 virus is not dominant currently in the country, but there is a probability it might spurt in monsoon and winter seasons.
