Delivering the Pentavalent and not medicine to rural patients

Dear Friends, The introduction of the pentavalent vaccine will further eat into the health budget as shown by Natasha Hsi, Abt Associates, Katherine Wolf, Emory University, Global Health Council (June 2, 2005). The study says that, with the introduction of the pentavalnent vaccine, the cost of routine immunization tripled. That is, instead of a per capita vaccine expenditure of 0.31$, the cost increased to 0.92$. It also says that we need to spend double the present health budget on vaccines after the support is withdrawn. The study states that the recipient countries need to develop a financial stability programme when they need to fund the initiative 100%. In India, another problem is closure of the very cheap vaccine manufacturing (public sector) units, which will destroy the financial and functional autonomy of the country and do irreparable damage by making the country dependent on private players for pentavalent. The question is: will GAVI transfer the technology of pentavalent vaccine manufacturing to these three public sector units? In my state, which is small, with just 6 million population, there are 1100 panchayts where we do not have any health facility at the moment but they will get costly pentavalent shots and not a tablet of paracetamol! We, under the pressure of the external agencies, are forgetting our health agenda and internal agencies are equally responsible for sharing this blame of not bothering about the paracetamol but about the costly vaccines that will drain the health budget after two years, crippling our self sustainability in vaccine manufacturing. Do the policy planners have any answers? regards, Dr. Omesh BhartiM.B.B.S.,D.H.M.,M.A.E.(Epidemiology)Directorate of Health Safety and Regulation, Himachal Pradesh+91-9418120302[[email protected]][email protected][/email]; [email protected] See the Web's breaking stories, chosen by people like you. Check out Yahoo! Buzz.