Children's death: Central team gives clean chit to JK govt

Giving a clean chit to the Jammu and Kashmir government, a five-member Central team of doctors today said the use of Pentavalent vaccine was not responsible for the death of children in G B Pant and SKIMS hospitals here recently.
"There is no casual link of Pentavalent vaccine with the death of the children," Additional Professor, Department of Pediatrics, AIIMS, and chairman of the team, Dr Prof N K Arora, told reporters here.
The team from the Union Health and Family Welfare ministry had arrived here on Saturday after news reports that the Pentavalent vaccine administered to children in G B Pant Hospital and SKIMS was fake and was the root cause of death of eight children.

Reacting to the reports, the state government had asked the Centre to depute a team of expert doctors to look into the issue.
Arora said the team went through all clinical and laboratory records of the patients in both the hospitals and conducted a thorough investigation into the matter.
"The expert team went on a field visit to five districts in Kashmir to assess the full health system and the overall process of immunization at place in the valley.

"Besides conducting an epidemiological investigation of the death cases, the team had discussions with family members of the children who reportedly died in hospitals, and also with community members and state immunization officers," he said.

"The team concluded the deaths were caused due to septicemia, pneumonia, meningitis and even due to liver disorder in some cases," Arora said adding they had presented their report to the Minister of State Shabir Ahmad Khan.
Since its introduction in the state in February 2012, around 2.5 lakh doses of the vaccine had been administered to children across the state, officials said.