SII can ramp up supplies to meet India’s IPV demand

Serum Institute of India (SII) on Thursday said it can ramp up supplies to meet India’s entire annual demand of the injectable inactivated poliomyelitis vaccines (IPV) within three to four months.

Adar Poonawalla, CEO, SII told Business Standard, “At the Serum Institute of India, we currently have a production capacity of around 60-70 million doses of IPV per year from our Dutch facility. While there is no current shortage, we can ramp up supplies to meet India’s full annual requirement within 3-4 months if the need arises.”

Poonawalla added that SII is committed to prioritising India’s needs as the only domestic supplier presently.

“Following which, we are ready to provide additional doses as this is vital for maintaining India’s polio-free status,” he said. India was declared polio-free in March 2014 and continues to hold that status.

IPV has been introduced in UIP as part of Global Polio end-game strategy since November 2015 initially in six states, which was expanded across the country by April 2016.

IPV is manufactured in India by two players — Sanofi and SII. It is estimated that Sanofi supplies almost 80 per cent of the IPV requirement in the UIP. The UIP targets 27 million children and 29 million pregnant women annually.

Some reports on Thursday claimed that Sanofi has shut down its plants, a development which triggered concerns around shortage of polio vaccines in the country.

But later in the evening, Sanofi clarified to Business Standard that it was not winding up its operations.

Industry sources claimed that moving the procurement of vaccines to the Central Medical Services Society (CMSS) has created more roadblocks. CMSS is the central procurement agency of the Union Health Ministry.

“Vaccines procurement was initially done by the MoHFW directly. Sometime back this was moved to CMSS which is also procuring medical devices,” said a supplier of medical goods to the government.

An email sent to the Additional Commissioner (In-charge-Immunisation) of the National Health Mission remained unanswered till the time of going to press.

An increasing number of polio-free countries are using IPV over oral polio vaccine. This is because the risk of paralytic polio associated with continued routine use of OPV is deemed greater than the risk of imported wild virus. The IPV shots are administered to children at six weeks, 14 weeks and nine months, while oral polio drops are administered at birth and then at 6,10,14 months and 1.5 years.

“We have already obtained approvals for our product IMOVAX-Polio, an alternative IPV vaccine that has been in use in more than 100 countries for 40+ years. It also has the same composition/formulation as ShanIPV®,” it said.

“We wish to assure all stakeholders that there will be no shortage of IPV vaccines in India on our account,” it said. Business Standard