Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

Shortage of anti-rabies vaccine triggers protests

Staff Reporter

DYFI activists stage sit-in at General Hospital

SPIRITED PROTEST: Activists of the DYFI staging a sit-in at General Hospital in the city on Thursday demanding adequate supply of anti-rabies vaccine. Photo: C. Ratheesh Kumar

Thiruvananthapuram: The shortage of anti-rabies vaccine triggered protests at General Hospital on Thursday, with several activists of the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) staging a sit-in at the hospital, demanding that the authorities take steps to make available the vaccines.

Hospital authorities said they could not maintain adequate supply of vaccines because of supply shortage as well as heavy inflow of dog-bite cases. Vaccines procured got over in no time because, on an average, 150 cases of dog bite were being attended to at General Hospital every day.

At present, hospital authorities are giving the vaccines free of cost to only those who produce below-the-poverty line card. The hospital will require about Rs.36,000 on a daily basis to purchase vaccines from outside. The daily revenue of the hospital development society does not exceed Rs.10,000.

As the vaccines are expensive and demand is high, such restrictions have to be put in place, the hospital authorities said.

Vaccines are in short supply at the general medical store of the Directorate of Health Services (DHS) also because the year's quota brought through the Central Purchase Committee has already been exhausted.

This year, the vaccine requirement has been very high in the district and Thiruvananthapuram has already exhausted its quota of 70,000 doses, which should normally have lasted till March 31.

The district health authorities said a chunk of the additional doses that had been procured for the district from the supplier had to be diverted to Varkala where a panic situation had arisen following the death of an elephant from rabies. Only those who had been in close contact with the elephant were required to take anti-rabies vaccination as a precaution. But with the entire village getting panicky, vaccines had to be diverted from other districts, they said.

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