H1N1 mass vaccination in India not professional, says doctors

Mass vaccination, which is being conducted in India as preventive measure against the resurging H1N1 swine flu is carried out in the wrong manner, pointed out medical professionals.

Indian Medical Association – the umbrella body of medical professionals practising modern medicine – has come out heavily on the unprofessional way the H1N1 swine flu mass vaccination programme being conducted across the country.

The medical body has strongly recommended that immunisation activity should be carried out in a hospital in the presence of doctors.

“It’s not wrong to conduct mass vaccination. But it should be carried out with the required number of doctors, clinical equipment and medicines on the side”, said Dr. Sharad Agarkhedkar, president, IMA Mumbai unit.

The organizers of mass vaccination don’t keep the proper equipments along with them in order to deal effectively with the emergency cases, the IMA members have said.

There are many organizations, which are carrying out these vaccinations in special camps for schoolchildren, but ideally it should be conducted in the presence of doctors, so that they can deal with the cases of side effects.

The vaccination requires only five minutes, however, expert doctors with saline, steroids and other medications should be on a standby in case there is a side effect.

The H1N1 vaccine can be given to people above 16 years. The other type of vaccine is given through nasal route, which is given to the people between 3 and 49 years.

The vaccine for H1N1 should not be given to the pregnant women and kids less than three years.

This year people are more immune to the disease, because they had got the vaccines last year. However, there are still some doubts about the efficiency of the vaccine as in for how long it can save a person from the flu.

IMA has made an appeal to the people to take the vaccine as a preventive measure, in view of the increasing number of H1N1 cases (swine flu) and two-three deaths in the last two days.

Several organisations have been conducting camps for school children and administering the vaccine.

Since the outbreak last summer, the total number of laboratory confirmed cases of H1N1 in the national Capital has reached 9,717with 96 people having fallen prey to the disease.

The onset of monsoons is causing a spurt in the number of infections in Indian cities, according to experts.

However, there is no need to panic as the health departments are well equipped to tackle any kind of situation, experts said.

Measures like sprucing up hospitals, stocking up on medicines, unleashing of information campaigns to generate awareness about detection and prevention of the influenza are in full swing.

Indian firms have also launched domestic vaccines in the country recently.

Serum Institute of India in Pune has launched a nasal spray H1N1 vaccine at the cost of Rs 150 per dose.

Zydus Cadila has also recently launched India’s first indigenously made H1N1 swine flu vaccine VaxiFlu-S in the country.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization’s emergency committee is about to review data infection data from Argentina to New Zealand and recommend that the agency and declare an end to the H1N1 swine flu pandemic.

WHO will determine whether the swine flu still calls for extra vigilance in the absence of any indication it has become more lethal or developed a resistance to drugs that fight it.

WHO declared the top level of its six-step pandemic alert in June 2009 after the discovery of the new H1N1 virus in Mexico and the U.S. two months earlier.

The H1N1 virus is now circulating at low levels worldwide after killing at least 18,337 people, WHO said on July 16.

“We are still not at the end of the Southern Hemisphere flu season, so we have to be very watchful,” stated a WHO official recently.

Seasonal flu kills as many as 500,000 people a year, according to WHO statistics. The full death toll from swine flu won’t be known until a year or two after the pandemic, the agency said.

Unlike seasonal flu, which kills predominantly the frail elderly, at least a fifth of those who died from swine flu were healthy adults with no underlying conditions, according to Sylvie Briand, head of WHO’s global influenza program.

Children younger than two years, pregnant women, people with lung diseases, metabolic disorders, weakened immune systems and certain neurological conditions are among groups at higher risk of developing a severe disease, WHO said in November. H1N1 also poses greater risk of complications in obese individuals and disadvantaged and indigenous populations, it said.

The pandemic virus is now behaving more like seasonal influenza in New Zealand, where it’s causing sporadic cases and clusters of infections in communities that may have avoided the disease last year, said Lance Jennings, a clinical virologist with Canterbury Health Laboratories in Christchurch.