Amid syringe shortage buzz, govt restricts export of certain types for 3 months

India on Saturday imposed a three month restriction on the export of three types of injection syringes apprehending a shortage for the Covid-19 vaccination scheme after ignoring syringe-makers’ repeated request on future planning and advance commitment to deal with such shortage in the world’s biggest adult vaccination programme.

The Union Health Ministry said there would be a “quantitative restriction” on the export of three specific types of syringes and manufacturers are free to meet their international commitments with other types of syringes.

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The three types of syringes prevented from export are (1) 0.5 ml/1 ml auto-disposable syringes; (2) 0.5 ml/1 ml/2 ml/3 ml disposable syringes and (3) 1 ml/2 ml/3 ml RUP (re-use prevention) syringes.

The government clarification comes four days after the Directorate General of Foreign Trade on Oct 5 issued a statement saying the export policy for syringes with or without needles had been amended from ‘free’ to ‘restricted’. This triggered sharp responses from the medical device industry because of the international orders they had.

With the changed order, the 20 odd Indian manufacturers can export a total of 4 crore syringes per month, which is less than one-third of the normal export of such syringes per month. The DGFT would decide which company would export how many pieces.

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"This is at least a partial relief. Also we can export 0.3 ml syringes (needed for Pfizer-BNT vaccine) as per our COVAX commitment. But advance planning was needed from the government, which should have informed the manufacturers what the country’s requirements are,” Rajiv Nath. chairman and managing director of Hindustan Syringes and Medical Device Ltd – the world’s largest manufacturers of auto-disabled syringes told DH.

Since last year Nath and a few others asked the health ministry to carry out early planning exercises taking the industry on board, so that the makers get adequate time to scale up their production. “Such an approach is better than having tenders with two weeks time and a penalty clause,” he said.

Since December 2020, HMD supplied 48.4 crore auto-disabled syringes till the first week of October. Currently the company is executing three orders totalling another 31 crore syringes.

There are three more supplies of auto-disabled syringes for the health ministry besides nearly 15 suppliers of disposable syringes.

India has administered more than 94 crore doses of Covid-19 vaccine and the average daily vaccination currently stands at upwards of 70 lakh. But the target is to vaccinate 94 crore plus adults with two doses of Covid-19 shots.

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