India on Thursday unveiled its first indigenous vaccine against the dreaded H1N1 which claimed over 18,000 lives globally and more than 1,000 in the country.
The country was earlier importing the vaccine from French company, Sanofi Pasteurs, for only health workers and other high-risk people.
The vaccine, produced by Zydus Cadilla, was launched on Thursday by Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, who took one of the first shots.
The mandate for developing the vaccine had been given to four companies — Serum Institute (Pune), Cadila Healthcare (Ahmedabad), Bharat Biotec (Delhi) and Panacea Biotech (Hyderabad).
The government has already placed orders with three companies.
Serum Institute is expected to produce the vaccine by the month end. While the vaccine developed by Zydus Cadilla is injectable, the one produced by Serum Institute would be a nasal drop.
“The nasal vaccine would be a de-activated vaccine while the injectable one is an activated one,” drug controller general of India Surinder Singh told reporters.
Requesting people to use the vaccine, which would be available at Rs 350 per dose from Friday, Mr Azad said he would write to the chief ministers and health ministers of all states to use the vaccine on their health workers as much as they can. The vaccine has been clinically tested on 269 people, Cadilla CMD Pankaj Patel said. Around 4.5 lakh doses will be available in the market in the first batch.
Mr Singh said the vaccine does not have any serious side effect except for slight fever, local pain and stomach upset.
The health minister said though the H1N1 virus had shown a decline in the country, there might be a spurt in cases in the monsoon and winter seasons. —PTI