Jammu region faces acute shortage of Rabies vaccine

HME dept takes up matter with Centre

JAMMU: There is an acute shortage of anti-Rabies vaccine not only in the government hospitals, including Government Medial College and Hospital (GMC&H), Jammu, the premier hospital of the region, but across the entire region as the life saving vaccine is also not available in the markets.

Sensing urgency of the grave situation on account of shortage of vaccine, the state health department has taken up the matter with union health ministry demanding that anti-Rabies “vaccine be provided by the union health ministry” to at least Government Medical College, Jammu, which caters to the patients from across the region right from Doda-Kishtwar at one end to Rajouri and Poonch at the other end, highly placed sources in the health department informed The News Now.

The anti-Rabies vaccine is supposed to be provided to the dog bite patients by the hospital but sources informed that vaccine has not been provided to the patients by this premier hospital since the last more than 8 months.

This had been forcing the patients to buy the vaccine from the market at much higher rates.

The situation has now has gone worse as the anti-Rabies vaccine is now hardly available in the market.

“Now, the anti-Rabies is also hardly available in the market due to unknown reasons,” many of the chemist shop owners said during the market survey conducted by The News Now.

Many shop owners said, “You give us the payment and come in the evening, we will try for the vaccine”.

Some of them however, said, “Sometimes, we arrange the anti-Rabies vaccine for the dog bite patients but on very higher rates but it takes time”. They said that the vaccine is not readily available.

“We first place order, then the supplier provides us the vaccine after hours or the next day and that too on much higher rates,” they said.

Sources said that on an average, around 30 to 40 dog bite patients come to the GMC on a daily basis. A dog bite patient is to be administered 5 vaccines on weekly basis.

Sources said that the hospital is only providing ‘serum’ which is administered locally on the body part with dog bite.

“We have taken up the matter with union health ministry requesting that anti-Rabies vaccine be provided on urgent basis,” Medical Superintendent, GMC, Dr Dara Singh told The News Now.