THESE days various news items are appearing in the newspapers regarding the purchase of vaccines for the expanded programme on immunisation (EPI) at federal and provincial levels.

It seems that the Public Procurement Regulation Authority (PPRA) rules are a hurdle in procurement of vaccines, a crucial component of the national health programme.

The principle of procurement as mentioned in the notification of PPRA rules state that “procuring agencies, while engaging in procurements, shall ensure that the procurements are conducted in a fair and transparent manner, the object of procurement brings value for money to the agency and the procurement process is efficient and economical.”

Based on this principal, the government agencies, including EPI have been procuring goods and services through public tenders.

Health is a important segment of the public sector development programme and especially immunisation programme is of utmost importance as it deals with the future of the nation.

After the promulgation of the 18th Amendment various aspects of procurement and implementation are now to be implemented by the provincial governments.

Procurement of vaccines is one such activity that needs capacity building as the federal government has been procuring and distributing vaccines to the provinces. It is also developing storage capacity with the support of donor agencies for these agencies do not have any infrastructure for the storage and distribution of their own.

Half a decade ago, these vaccines were being purchased from Unicef, but due to the following reasons the PMA filed a petition in the public interest:

• Some of the vaccines procured were of very short shelf life, less than 50 per cent.

• Massive tax evasion by misdeclaration of vaccines as diplomatic shipment while selling the same locally.

• Import of non-registered vaccines without fulfilling the requirements of the Drugs Act 1976.

These activities actually ended up in non-development of local expertise like National Laboratory for Biologicals, a base for development of local industry.

Currently, GAVI provides funds to the poor countries for purchase of some of the vaccines supplied through Unicef. This is in turn linked with procurement of a decided quantity of same vaccines by the country from its own resources.

Failure to do this is considered default and may lead to stoppage of GAVI-funded vaccines’ support programme.

The EPI has this year not been able to procure vaccines as mentioned in the media reports, and this may jeopardise the GAVI funding for the next year and thus may lead to shortage of certain vaccines in the country.

Vaccines procurement normally may take three to four months, but currently there is a global shortage of some vaccines due to increased requirement and less production of quality vaccines of WHO-approved standards.

Hopefully, federal and provincial governments will make plans for the procurement and storage of vaccines for the safety of our future generation and would not wait till the eleventh hour and try to declare emergency to avoid PPRA rules.

These rules can be suspended only in cases of natural calamities or disasters but not due to the deliberate acts to get the rules suspended.

DR SHEHZAD Karachi