PESHAWAR, July 6: A team investigating an incident in which some 500 people fell ill last week after being administered vaccines in the flood-hit Regi area has asked the health department to get the vaccines tested at a laboratory recommended by the WHO in order to compile a report based on scientific evidence.
Members of the team have also asked the National Institute of Health, Islamabad, to provide the leaflet bearing scientific information about the vaccines. “This is an extremely sensitive issue. We have asked the NIH to provide information about the expected and adverse side-effects of the TAB vaccines,” said a member of the committee appointed by the provincial government.
The government officials on Saturday last began vaccinating people in the flood-hit areas against tuberculosis and cholera, but many people fell unconscious after being vaccinated.
The inquiry committee found three vials of the vaccines, none of which were labelled. The executive district office which procures the vaccines from the NIH has claimed that the expiry date was October 2008.
The inquiry team member said that one person had been admitted to the ICU and five others to the medical ward of the Khyber Teaching Hospital in Peshawar. He said proper documentation about problems the patients faced after being vaccinated was missing, which made it difficult for the inquiry team to formulate a report.
The committee, he said, needed information on gender, ages and clinical symptoms such as temperature etc, of the affected people, which were not available.
He said there was a possibility that the people had been administered the vaccines in excessive dosages, or the cold chain required for their preservation had been compromised. A few health staffers were asked to administer vaccines to hundreds of people, who could have miscalculated the dosages, he added.
According to him, the committee had recommended to the health department to test the vaccines from a WHO-recommended laboratory because the committee members feared that the NIH might not give correct information about the vaccines.
Vaccines were manufactured in different batches and one particular batch caused the reaction, he said. Health workers had vaccinated 700 people in Garhi Tajik, 200 in Palosai, 700 in Nahaqai and 500 in Shahi, but it was the batch used in the Regi locality which caused reaction.
Usually, an adverse reaction causes drowsiness, skin rash, low blood pressure, nausea and vomiting, but these symptoms were non-existent among the affected people.
The NIH had also been asked if it had manufactured the vaccines locally. If yes, for how many years? If the vaccines had been imported from other countries, when had it started importing them? “We have asked the NIH to clarify if the vaccines were recommended by the WHO,” the inquiry team member said.
He said tenderness and pain associated with mild temperatures were natural side-affects of any vaccines. In the changing global scenario, manufacture of vaccines had become part of national security.
