Shutting down vaccine PSUs will erode capabilities further, says Congress

The Congress on Friday hit out at the government over the Bharat Immunologicals and Biologicals Corporation Limited (BIBCOL) reportedly facing a "grim future", and said shutting down vaccine PSUs will only erode the country's capabilities further.

Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh shared on X a media report which claimed that the BIBCOL factory in Uttar Pradesh's Bulandshahr, that was at the forefront of India's fight against polio before, hasn't produced a single vaccine since December 2022.

"Bharat Immunologicals and Biologicals Corporation (BIBCOL) was set up in the late 1980s, at the personal initiative of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, to make India self-sufficient in the production of oral polio vaccines. It was my good fortune to have been associated with its establishment at Bulandshahr in UP as part of the technology mission on immunisation," Ramesh said in a post on X.

But BIBCOL now faces a "grim future in the era of the non-biological PM", he said.

Manufacturing has shut down since December 2022 and workers haven't been paid for a year, even as they are desperate and uncertain about their futures, Ramesh said.

"Proposals to revive it to produce Covaxin, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, did not take flight due to the lack of administrative will ?despite the sanctioning of funds," he claimed.

"The non-biological PM had even visited Bulandshahr for his election campaign, but did not say a single word about reviving the plant," Ramesh said.

The Covid-19 pandemic was evidence that India is in need of strong domestic manufacturing capabilities, including in the public sector, he said.

"The devastating second wave of the pandemic, which killed lakhs of Indians and led to unprecedented scenes of suffering, was entirely preventable.It came many months after the vaccines were developed and was caused by an insufficient mobilisation of India's vaccine manufacturing capabilities and poor government strategy," he said.

Shutting down our vaccine PSUs will only erode our capabilities further, Ramesh added.