Vaccines from old stock were administered to babies, says official

DHO issues notice to nursing home on death of two infants

 Shushrusha Nursing Home in Yelahanka Old Town, where two newborn babies died of suspected drug reaction after being administered BCG, polio and Hepatitis B vaccines on Monday within 24 hours of their birth, had used old stocks of the vaccination.

The injections and drops were given to other babies before being used again on Monday.
Basavaraj Hasangi, the assistant drug controller who visited the hospital on Tuesday, said the hospital had used four vials of Tubervac, the BCG vaccine, before administering the fifth one to the babies. Similarly, seven vials of PrimPol, the polio drop, were used and three vials remained.

Of Shanvac-B, the Hepatitis B vaccine, three out of the eight vials were used. Strangely, all the three vaccines were administered to a day-old-babies at the same time, he added.
Hasangi said he had verified the stock of vaccines at the hospital and collected the samples. In order to send the vaccines for sampling, a larger quantity is required, so drug control officers will visit Rajsons Pharma India Ltd, the pharmaceutical company which supplied the drugs, he added.

“Rajsons Pharma supplied this batch of vaccines to many other places and we will instruct it to recall the samples. Once we collect a sizeable number of vaccines, we’ll send them to the Central Drug Laboratory at Kasauli in Himachal Pradesh,” the officer said.

Meanwhile, Dr Nadeem Ahmed, in-charge DHO, said a notice had been issued to the hospital under the Karnataka Private Medical Establishment Act, 2007. “The vaccines were administered as per WHO guidelines and there has been no further violation,” he added.

On its part, the hospital said it had filed a police complaint and was trying to find out what went wrong. Dr Shashidhar H S, medical director, Shushrusha Nursing Home, said such an incident had happened for the first time at the hospital.

“We have been running the nursing home for the last 30 years and many children were born in our hospital. There has never been such an incident in the past and we too are shocked about the death of the babies. We have been following international standards as far as administration of vaccines is concerned and we are still unable to find out what went wrong,” he added.

Police are awaiting reports of post-mortem on the babies.