HASAN MANSOOR
KARACHI: A major project introduced by the Sindh government to ensure quality of vaccine is yet to kick off despite the lapse of two financial years in which hefty allocations made for the project lapsed because of authorities slipshod attitude towards it, it emerged on Sunday.
The provincial government had earmarked Rs500 million in fiscal year 2013-14 for the scheme to install solar-energy powered systems at vaccine storage points across Sindh.
Officials said it was a billion-rupee project and half of its money had been earmarked in that budget.
The project aimed at providing solar energy powered systems that ensure potency, quality and safety of vaccines by maintaining the correct temperature from manufacturer to vaccine recipients.
The cold chain is a system by which vaccines, which are sensitive to heat, are kept cold from the time they are manufactured until they are administered. The equipment and people that keep vaccines cold during their journey are together called the cold chain.
Its journey starts from the manufacturer to the cold storage at the airport from where it is transported at correct temperature to the storage in central, regional and district stores and in health centres.
Through that entire journey the correct temperature is the key to retain vaccine potency and that its wastage is reduced.
It should be kept at correct temperature during immunisation sessions.
The officials in the provincial health department said that its vertical programme, the expanded programme on immunisation, meant to organise and launch vaccination campaigns, was already using photovoltaic cold chain in certain remote districts of Sindh.
However, they added that most of that equipment had lived its shelf life and was reportedly developing faults with increasingly shorter intervals.
Sources said that even the ordinary equipment, refrigerators, etc, had gone out of order or needed urgent replacement with better gears and gadgets.
They added that the costly project was approved by the competent authority more than two years ago and the officials concerned had even started groundwork for its formal launch, but it ultimately went dormant for unspecified reasons.
Allocations were also made during the last fiscal year (2014-15), which too allowed to be lapsed.
The implementation on this long overdue project is still not in sight, said a source.
Some senior officials, approached by Dawn, refused to comment on the status of the project.
Sources, however, said the project was pivotal to immunisation campaigns for the existing cold chain was vulnerable because of persisting energy problems.
Campaigns for polio were already facing tough security issues, particularly in Karachi where the authorities have launched special drives requiring greater security measures in the city’s sensitive neighbourhoods. Many such campaigns have been cancelled lately because the police were unable to provide proper security to vaccinators for various reasons.
The officials still report deaths because of measles for insufficient resources and little focus.
The officials said the solar-powered equipment, which was being introduced in other provinces as well, was an effective replacement to their storage facilities.
They said certain vaccines, oral poliovirus vaccine in particular, were vulnerable to heat and the situation exacerbated because of frequent power outages.
Published in Dawn, November 9th, 2015