Doctors say pentavalent vaccine safe

Days after a doctor filed a public interest litigation (PIL) in the top court calling for a ban on the use of Pentavalent vaccine, a fine-in-one shot vaccine comprising of antigens of Deptheria, Pertussis, Tetanus and Hepatitis B and Haemophilus Influenza Type b (Hib), the Indian Academy of Paediatrics (IAP) assured that available vaccine was safe.

Endorsing the government governments decision to introduce the vaccine, it condemned the attempts of those distorting facts and create confusion regarding the safety of the vaccine. “The strong faith of the academy in the pentavalent vaccines has been reaffirmed by its membership, majority of whom are using these vaccines in their clinical practice for more than a decade,” it said.
In fact, in their recent study comprising around 1,000 paediatricians, it found that more than 80 per cent of them are using Hib-containing pentavalent vaccine in their clinical practice for more than last 5-15 years. “Majority of them had never encountered any serious AEFI, including death (under publication),” it added.
According to experts, like all injectable vaccines some adverse reactions do occur with pentavalent vaccines, the reactions are, however, they say, are mild and include fever and pain, swelling and redness at the site of injection. “The review of published literature on the safety of available pentavalent (DTwP-HepB-Hib) vaccines in India, including the currently employed PENTAVAC by Serum Institute of India (SII) in many states of the country is quite comforting. Within India, clinical trials of SII’s pentavalent vaccine found no serious AEFI in clinical trials amongst Indian children. Clinical trials of other manufacturers’ pentavalent vaccines (both multinationals and Indian manufacturers) in India also found just 1 serious AEFI determined to be vaccine-associated (excessive crying)”.
In 2009, India’s National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation had advised the government to incorporate Hib via pentavalent into its national immunisation programme. The recommendation was endorsed by the Indian Academy of Paediatrics, a body of more than 19,000 paediatricians.
Since then, around 8.2 million doses have been administered to children in eight Indian states and the government is considering rolling out the vaccine nationwide.
The academy has welcomed the steps taken by government in setting up district, state and national-level AEFI committee for monitoring all serious AEFI.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/257101" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: &lt;a&gt; &lt;em&gt; &lt;strong&gt; &lt;cite&gt; &lt;code&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;ol&gt; &lt;li&gt; &lt;dl&gt; &lt;dt&gt; &lt;dd&gt;</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-04242eaf58bf6c742be77b96e4353c61" value="form-04242eaf58bf6c742be77b96e4353c61" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="85261813" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>

No Articles Found

No Articles Found

No Articles Found

I want to begin with a little story that was told to me by a leading executive at Aptech. He was exercising in a gym with a lot of younger people.

Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen didn’t make the cut. Neither did Shaji Karun’s Piravi, which bagged 31 international awards.