KARACHI: Patients seeking to get their children immunised against hepatitis B, typhoid, chicken pox and other diseases are facing immense difficulties to find the vaccines in the markets, it emerged on Tuesday.

Speaking to Dawn, some parents expressed their frustration over the ‘absence’ of the vaccines against chickenpox — a mild and common childhood illness caused by Varicella-zoster virus — at pharmacies.

“I couldn’t find the vaccine against chickenpox anywhere in the markets of Karachi. Finally, I sent a letter to the pharmacy of a reputable private hospital requesting them to share the reason behind the unavailability of the vaccine. But I didn’t receive any reply,” said former chairman of the Pharmaceutical Association of Pakistan Saeed Allahwala.

However, he added, he couldn’t contact the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan in this regard.

The chief executive officer of the regulatory authority Dr Mohammad Aslam was not available for comments.

Speaking to Dawn, doctors associated with various hospitals in the city expressed concern over the situation and said in a country that already had very low vaccination coverage, the ‘absence of certain vaccines’ would deprive parents of their right to take good care of their children.

High-quality vaccines for certain diseases, they said, had almost disappeared from the market after periodic shortages.

“High-quality vaccines like the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine have been running into serious shortage for some time. There is also a serious shortage of vaccines to prevent Hepatitis B, typhoid, chicken pox and another vaccine providing protection against six diseases,” said Dr Khalid Shafi working as assistant professor at the Dow University of Health Sciences.

Dr Shafi, also an active member of the Pakistan Paediatric Association, said the past two years had witnessed periodic shortages of the vaccines. “We have no direct contact with the DRAP over this issue, but what we have heard is that there have been some manufacturing gaps in the production of vaccines. It seems the demand for vaccines has increased but the supply couldn’t catch up.”

However, he said the vaccines were available in the countries which offered good prices to their manufacturers. “Certainly, the DRAP will have a clear picture of the actual situation,” he said in reply to a question.

According to Dr Shafi, Indian and Chinese vaccines against these diseases are available in limited stocks in the market but there was no reliability of these products.

He said the vaccines included in the national expanded programme on immunization were available free of cost at public sector hospitals. “In a country where we have 30pc vaccination coverage and people are unable to avail the vaccines being provided free of cost, it’s a sorry state of affairs,” he said, adding that he had been seeing a lot of chickenpox and measles cases these days.

Dr Jamal Raza, heading the National Institute of Child Health, too, was unaware of the actual reason behind the vaccine shortage while agreeing that certain vaccines had disappeared from the market after periodic shortage for the past couple of years. “Perhaps there are issues over their rates. I have also heard that there is a global problem in their manufacturing,” he said.

Published in Dawn, February 24th, 2016