Measles outbreak: ‘Deaths due to ignorance, not bad vaccine’

Heads of hospitals say children could have been saved by prompt treatment.

LAHORE:

Dozens of children have died of measles over the last five months not because the vaccine they were given was substandard, but because their parents delayed getting them medical care, the heads of three major public hospitals told the Lahore High Court on Tuesday.

Justice Khalid Mahmood Khan of the LHC was hearing a petition seeking a judicial inquiry into the causes of the measles outbreak. At the last hearing, petitioner Advocate Azhar Siddique alleged that children were administered substandard vaccine while good quality vaccine was stolen and sold to private hospitals.

The medical superintendents of Mayo Hospital, Services Hospital and Jinnah Hospital submitted a report on Tuesday stating that the deaths could have been prevented if the children had been provided medical care promptly.

They said the parents had taken their children first to “black magic” practitioners or other quacks and only brought them to hospital at the last moment.



Justice Khan directed the Punjab government and the Health Department to file their replies to the petition at the next hearing on May 29. He remarked that if it were established that children had been given a spurious vaccine, the officials responsible would be sent to jail, regardless of who they were.

At the last hearing, Advocate Siddique told the court that children who had been vaccinated were dying, showing that the vaccine was substandard.

He produced some documents purporting to show that vaccination coverage reports had been faked, and vaccine stolen from government supplies was being sold at private hospitals.

He alleged that officials of the Health Department, including the city’s executive district officer (health) were in on the sale of the vaccine, which was supposed to be administered for free.

He argued that the federal and provincial governments had been negligent in their duty to respond to the measles outbreak and asked the court to order a judicial inquiry that would find the causes of the epidemic and assign blame on government functionaries.

According to official statistics, there have been over 12,000 cases of measles in the province in the last five months.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 22^nd, 2013.