K-P Health Dept buys diphtheria drug from Croatia

Number of affected children rises to 262, parents desperate as medicine unavailable in smaller health units

PESHAWAR: Diphtheria outbreak in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa is getting worse with number of affected children hitting 262 on Monday and health department left with only 25 vials of preventive injections.

Sources in the K-P health ministry said that the department has paid Rs8 million to a Croatian firm to urgently import 2,100 vials of anti-diphtheria serum.

“Diphtheria cases have been reported from the entire K-P including the merged tribal districts,” said a health official requesting anonymity as he was not authorised to talk to the media.

“The number of cases of deadly disease of diphtheria has reached 262 while the department has been left with only 25 vials,” he said.

The K-P health department has decided to import anti-diphtheria serum from Croatia on emergency basis, the sources said.

They said that parents of affected children were facing great difficulty in procuring the medicine.

Keeping in view the increasing number of diphtheria cases health department bypassed many bureaucratic hurdles and requested a Croatian company urgently supply 2,100 packaged vials of ADS for which payment of more than Rs8 million has been made.

Sources say that ADS is being prepared only in Croatia and India, thus limiting the choice for import source. Besides, this vaccine is not registered in Pakistan and neither is it in the list of Drug Regulatory Authority due to which K-P health department is encountering difficulties.

The state of routine immunisation remains precarious in tribal districts, sources said. Except North Waziristan, children from former frontier regions (FR) of Bannu, Lakki Marwat, Tank and Kirk are being brought to tertiary care hospitals of the province for treatment.

They said that owing to lack of awareness among people to get their children vaccinated, the incidence of diphtheria is rife in K-P. During 2017, the provincial health department had to import 6,000 vials twice to meet the overwhelming surge in number of children suffering from the preventable disease.

According to sources from the merged tribal districts this complaint has also surfaced that provided free of cost, the vaccination in tribal districts is being provided in heavy amount by some doctors.

They said that authorities were still unaware of the situation in primary and secondary care health units where some unscrupulous doctors were taking payments to administer the otherwise free drug.

Another issue is the want of exercise of authority by the heads of the medical teaching institutes (MTI). As per directives of the Ministry of National Health Services, Regulation and Coordination an MTI can buy life-saving drugs.

However, the hospitals are relying on provincial health department for the diphtheria medicine. Sources in this regard also say that department is also helpless in this regard as it doesn’t have funds for this under any head. Department prior to purchasing the vaccine has to arrange funds through cold-chain and other EPI programmes.

According to sources at the moment in K-P most of the cases are being reported from DI Khan, Bannu, Kirk, Lakki Marwat for which department has now begun giving beta medicines to children while with this tetanus diphtheria (TD) vaccines are being given to children older than five years so that this disease does not transfer to other children.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 21^st, 2018.