HYDERABAD: Drug inspectors are scurrying around all government immunisation centres and hospitals to crosscheck if bivalent Oral Polio Vaccine (bOPV) vials manufactured by Bio-Med are kept in stock. Till date around 40,000 bOPV vials of Bio-Med have been recalled and kept at a cold chain store in Koti. They are not being used anywhere in the State.
After Ministry of Health and Family Welfare officials sent alerts on September 10 and September 24 to stop usage of bOPV made by Bio-Med, followed by another message that a batch of the vials were found to be contaminated with Type-2 Polio virus, all polio vaccine vials of the company were recalled and not used in the State.
While the State Health department officials said that they have already sent samples of the vials to Central Drug Laboratory, Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh, director of the DCA Dr Preeti Meena said that they too are going to send samples from the seven batches for testing to the laboratory in Kasauli, on Friday or Saturday. “At times, during immunisation drives, polio vaccine vials are given to maternity homes and nursing homes too. We appeal to managements of such nursing homes to return bOPV vials of Bio-Med to district immunisation centres if they have any,” said M Surendranath Sai, joint director of DCA.
Over the past few days, messages are being circulated on messaging app WhatsApp warning parents against giving polio vaccine to children below 5 years of age. The message claimed ‘some virus had been found in them’ and advised parents not to vaccinate children till the next update. State health officials urged people not to believe such messages.
“All batches of Bio-Med vaccines have been removed from shelves,” said Dr G Srinivasa Rao, director of Public Health and Family Welfare. Other senior officials from the department said that bOPV manufactured by another company have been procured and only those will be used. “Apart from Bio-med, we had vaccines manufactured by three other companies,” officials said.