ISLAMABAD: Following the Executive Committee of National Economic Council’s (Ecnec) recommendations, the National Institute of Health (NIH) has begun the process to increase vaccine production in the country.

It is expected that by 2017, the production of the measles vaccine will also be started in the country, while the production of other vaccines which are already being produced in Pakistan, will be increased.

Ecnec is a national forum on development with representatives from all four provinces, Azad Kashmir and economic ministries. It has recommended that the basis for indigenous vaccine production be broadened to meet national demands for vaccines, ensure vaccine security and save foreign exchange.

The NIH has also been criticised at various forums, including parliamentary standing committees, for having closed 80pc of its vaccine production units over the last decade, while 60pc of the institute’s employees work in vaccine production departments. At one time, the NIH also used to produce the polio vaccine, but was also stopped.

Employees’ salaries have also been delayed due to financial issues a number of times, leading to protests. At times, protesting employees even shut the gates to the institute while senior officials were in their offices.

The chief of the NIH Biological Production Division, Anwar Begum, told Dawn it was decided that a number of public private projects would be started to produce vaccines.

“We are producing some vaccines, for snakebite venom rabies, allergies, typhoid and cholera, but they do not meet the country’s requirements,” she said.

“With the support of the private sector and international organizations the production of these vaccines will be increased to ensure that they not only meet local requirements, but we can also export them in the future to contribute to the foreign exchange account.”

She said Pakistan had stopped producing the measles vaccine and begun importing it, and it has been decided that the production of the measles vaccine will begin by 2017.

A meeting was also chaired by the National Health Services secretary Ayub Sheikh, to discuss the possibilities for enhancing Pakistani vaccine production.

The NIH began as the Bureau of Laboratories in Karachi in June 1948, and a national health centre was established in Islamabad in 1960 to serve as a unified public health facility whose units were merged into one organisation, the National Health Laboratories (NHL), in 1974.

In 1980, the NHL was made an autonomous body of the health ministry through a presidential ordinance, under the name NIH, with a principal function to serve as the premier public health services institute and foster international and regional collaboration, through participation in global disease control activities.

Published in Dawn, October 1st, 2016