Health Min rules out measles vaccine defect

The Union Health Ministry on Wednesday ruled out any defect in the measles vaccine after the administration of which four children died near Lucknow and instead attributed the tragedy to systemic failure.

The Union Health Ministry on Wednesday ruled out any defect in the measles vaccine after the administration of which four children died near Lucknow and instead attributed the tragedy to systemic failure.

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"The vaccine was right. There was system failure. There must be something wrong with the delivery or programme management," Health Secretary Sujatha Rao said.

Her comments came after a two-member health ministry team which had been dispatched to Lucknow on Saturday after the death of the children submitted its report today.

Rao said that the samples would be sent to Kasauli for further testing and an immunological team would also be sent to the companies manufacturing the vaccines to test whether there were any problems in that end.

Four children out of 35 died when one of the teams immunised children in Bindauwa, Padminkhera, Ahmedpur Khalsa, Narayanpur Utaranwan and Rampurgarhi villages.

The state government said that more than two lakh children were immunised in 20,000 villages of the state on August 21 and in Lucknow area more than 3,000 children were immunised in 278 villages on the same day.