Can Nepal not make its own vaccine?
At that time, the demand for the vaccine against Covid was very high, while India did not have enough vaccine for its own citizens.
It is said that although there was a need for vaccine production in Nepal, policymakers ignored it and a vaccine production company should be established.
The context is during the Covid-19 pandemic. Nepal was importing 2 million Covid-19 vaccines from India. After sending the first batch of 1 million, the second 1 million vials could not arrive. The import of the vaccine to Nepal was stopped due to a court order there.
The main reason for this is that there was not enough vaccine for their country. After this, Delta, which is considered the most deadly of the Covid variants, badly affected Nepal after India. If the second 1 million vaccines had arrived at that time, perhaps many deaths could have been saved.
Similarly, the recent resurgence of Japanese encephalitis has seen an increase in the number of infected deaths in the last few years. Nepal must rely on imports for this vaccine as well. Apart from these, vaccines are considered the surest way to prevent the outbreak of many other infectious diseases.
Past and present experiences of these studies also show that as we enter the 21st century, vaccines are the only solution for new (like Covid) and previously controlled and resurgent diseases (like Japanese encephalitis).
Although some medicines are currently being produced domestically, there is no vaccine production. It seems that policymakers have almost ignored the need for vaccine production.
Is it that Nepal itself cannot produce a vaccine for use in humans? Or has the health sector not yet realized the need for it, been unable to do it, or is not interested?
There are not enough health centers or hospitals in Nepal. Moreover, health centers equipped with the necessary physical infrastructure and resources are even more limited. In such a situation, if any infection spreads or takes the form of an epidemic, there will be a shortage of hospital beds, resources, and health workers.
This increases the risk of patient death. When I was working at Teku Hospital two and a half decades ago, dozens of patients with diarrhea and cholera were admitted every hour during the rainy season.
Similarly, Japanese encephalitis has a high mortality rate, so dozens of people were admitted every week during the mosquito season. Most of those admitted had to die because they arrived at the hospital late.
Generally, the impact of Japanese encephalitis is greater in the Terai. Due to the lack of sufficient hospital beds and manpower there, they were forced to come to Kathmandu.
But later, after the vaccine against Japanese encephalitis was used in Nepal, the mortality rate decreased sharply. At that time, support for the vaccine came from neighboring China. The support itself is not bad, but the question is for how long?
Nepal had expected foreign support for the vaccine during the Covid epidemic. At Nepal's request, India agreed to provide the Indian-made vaccine called Covoshield. However, when the second batch was to be sent, the vaccine could not reach Nepal because the court there had ordered to give priority to its citizens first and not to export it.
This decision is not surprising. Because at that time, the demand for the vaccine against Covid was very high, while India did not have enough vaccine for its own citizens. At that time, 'vaccine diplomacy' was also very popular.
There was a competition among developed countries to develop the vaccine against Covid the fastest. At that time, Covid was present as a great enemy against humanity, and the world was working day and night to develop a vaccine to protect itself from it.
After the Covid vaccine was stopped from India, another neighboring country, China, received the Covid vaccine as assistance. This also shows how important vaccines are during major epidemics.
The role played by the Serum Institute of India during the Covid pandemic is also an example of how much relief can be provided in an epidemic when a vaccine manufacturing company is available.
Although Covid itself is a new disease, scientists were able to develop a vaccine faster than expected due to their hard work day and night. Naturally, the possibility of developing a new vaccine is also greater in developed countries due to the presence of high-quality research laboratories and excellent scientists.
During an epidemic of a highly infectious and deadly disease that terrifies the world, only a limited number of vaccines are produced by limited production organizations in limited countries. In this case, the possibility of sending it to other countries or the rest of the world is also reduced.
But if the vaccine formula or the 'components' used in the vaccine can be obtained and a vaccine manufacturing company is available, India can be taken as an example that vaccine production can be continued. If there was a vaccine manufacturing company in Nepal during the Covid pandemic, human losses could have been prevented to a large extent. It was a situation where we had to sit and stare at foreigners.
It has only been a few years since the Covid pandemic ended. Those moments are still very tragic, especially for those who have lost their relatives to Covid or who have managed to survive severe Covid.
But it has also taught us some lessons.
