WHO minimizes risk for Indian children of contaminated polio vaccine

MUMBAI (Reuters) – The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday that there is a minimal risk that children will get the polio virus in India from a batch of contaminated vaccines.

The public health crisis, which could affect thousands of children, has re-launched the quality control procedures for lax pharmaceuticals in India.

The latest concerns emerged this weekend after vaccines produced by private company Bio-Med Pvt Ltd and distributed as part of a free government effort to eradicate polio have been shown to carry strain of the virus that had been eradicated worldwide and phased out. vaccines.

However, Shamila Sharma, a spokeswoman for the WHO, said that any risk to children was "minimal" because of the high vaccination coverage against routine polio in India. WHO funds and supports the Indian polio program.

Health officials in New Delhi said they were investigating why and how Bio-Med was still producing such vaccines, and that the affected lots were being recalled. The Indian government had ordered the discontinuation of this type of vaccine in 2016.

Local media reported this weekend that police had arrested the chief executive of Bio-Med Pvt Ltd, based in northern India, after routine tests revealed that she had fabricated and shipped approximately 150,000 lots of oral polio vaccine containing type 2 virus.

India, often dubbed the world's pharmacy, is home to thousands of factories manufacturing drugs and vaccines for sale around the world, but local regulation is lax. In recent years, US and European regulators have criticized many Indian drug factories for their faulty manufacturing practices, often issuing warnings or bans.

"We do not have good quality control mechanisms," said Oommen Kurian, a health researcher with the New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation, adding that the country also lacked the capacity to implement a regulation.

Bio-Med and India's leading drug regulator, the central pharmaceutical standards body, failed to respond to requests for comments received on Monday.

Some lots of typhoid vaccines produced by Bio-Med were also deemed "non-standard" by CDSCO earlier this year, according to a public notice from the agency dated March 14, 2018.