Vaccination deaths

— The tragic death of four infants during a measles vaccination programme in Baksa district on Wednesday is most unfortunate. While it is difficult to establish the exact cause of death as yet, the sooner the Government comes out with some concrete explanation through probes the better it would be for restoration of confidence among the people. The incident has naturally led to apprehensions in the minds of the parents, who are now reluctant to get their babies vaccinated against the disease. A Central Government team together with another formed by the State Government is investigating the matter, and one hopes they would be able to throw light on the deaths. The post-mortem of the infants could also help in ascertaining the nature of their death. While vaccines meant for infants are said to be totally free from serious side effects, a thorough inquiry covering all aspects from production and packaging to storage, handling and its final administration on infants is the need of the hour. If nothing is found to be wrong with the vaccine, contamination or anomalies could have occurred at some point of the administration process due to human error or lapse. As to the Government's reasoning seeking to link the deaths with possible pre-existing diseases among the infants, one fails to understand why infants with disorders that may cause fatal reaction while vaccinated are not left out of purview of the immunization campaign. Then, since the vaccination programme involves lakhs of children, questions also arise whether the Health Department has enough trained personnel for smooth handling of the immunization campaign. While the Baksa incident has obviously been a setback, abandoning of the vaccination programme is never the answer, given the high child mortality rate in the State. Rather, bringing more and more children under the Universal Immunization Programme is a dire need to ensure a healthy future of our children. The political parties that are hell-bent on gaining political mileage out of the tragedy are adding to the confusion and panic by making wild allegations. source: assam tribune