RAWALPINDI, May 11: The Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) has alleged that an agreement between the National Institute of Health (NIH) and the Butantan Institute of Brazil on the import of cell culture rabies vaccine is a gross violation of World Health Organisation (WHO) rules because the Brazilian institute is not approved by the WHO.

The PMA’s Islamabad-Rawalpindi chapter, in a press release issued here on Saturday, said the vaccine to be imported was also not WHO certified.

PMA President Dr Mohammad Arshad Rana claimed that the vaccine would be imported in unlabelled vials on deferred payments and would be supplied to hospitals after being labelled and packed at NIH.

Mr Rana said: “It was misconduct on the part of NIH to label the imported vaccine with its name.” The PMA demanded that an immediate inquiry should be launched against the recent agreement.

Appreciating the initiation of an inquiry by the federal health minister into the purchase of auto-destruct syringes (ADS) for the extended programme of immunisation (EPI) by NIH. The syringes were earlier discarded by the Central Drugs Laboratory when the government wanted to by these syringes for Hepatitis Control Programme.

According to the PMA press release, the auto-destruct syringes prepared by a Dubai-based company were declared as substandard by the CDL. And after the purchase was made public, the PMA intimated the federal health secretary about the misconduct by the NIH.

The PMA president claimed that NIH had been producing obsolete sheep brain anti rabies vaccine, which had been discarded in most of the countries and the WHO also declared it obsolete in 1992. He said the NIH executive director had accepted that the vaccine was obsolete and it was being phased out.

It is not understandable why this action was not taken earlier, the PMA chief said, adding that NIH had also accepted the views of PMA that the shortage of snakebite serum and rabies vaccine was met through imports whereas function No. 11 of NIH listed on its official website states that “NIH will function as sole producer of vaccines and sera for prophylactic and the therapeutic use and acquire capability of meeting domestic and foreign demands.”

The NIH produces only 30,000 vials of snakebite serum against the demand of 100,000 vials, the PMA president said.