District hospital short of anti rabies vaccine

Acute shortage of anti-rabies injection at the district hospital is leaving the people who need them in the lurch.  The hospital authorities say that the people come from as far as Saharanpur area for anti-rabies vaccine which is administered to the patients free of cost, but the vaccine is not available in required quantities. Things continuing this way, the patients are at the receiving end of the shortage and they are being forced to buy the vaccines from the private pharmacies.

Though all the government hospitals in the district are authorised to administer anti-rabies vaccines the district hospital alone gets the supplies and that too in limited quantity.

Multiple factors have led to the shortage of vaccines, say the officials. Speaking of the matter, CMS district hospital Arjun Singh Senger said, “It is not that the district hospital alone is reeling under the shortage of anti-rabies vaccine. Even in the markets, the vaccine is not available. We get half the quantity than what is demanded.” Dwelling on the other factor, he said, “The patients try to acquire the vaccines when they do not need them.  A patient came from a village in Saharanpur yesterday and said that his pet dog had scratched his leg with its paw. We tried hard to explain to him that no vaccine was needed for such scratches. But he insisted on being given one. This is just one example of the cases we are encountering here. This is a cause behind the scarcity of the vaccines.”

He further said that vigorous awareness campaigns should be launched to make the pet owners aware of the situations when anti-rabies vaccines must be administered. “In case the people stop haggling for such vaccines when they do not need them they might not be as scarce as they are now,” he added. 

However, the patients who throng the district hospital from as far as Saharanpur and Roorkee rue that they are always scarce at the facility. “We are sure the vaccines are not supplied here in tune with their demand. There are instances of the hospital reeling under the scarcity of the vaccines for two months and even more at a stretch,” says one.

Another says that with the incidents of the stray dogs biting the people happening thick and fast in several localities, the hospitals must have the required amount of the vaccines at any point of time.      

Incidentally, a dog had set its teeth into the body an 11- year- old Mohammad Khalid from Gandikhata village on Monday. Two more cases of school students Sanjna Aswal and Komal being bitten by stray dogs have been reported over the past of couple of days, the villagers said and insisted that the stock of the district hospital must be replenished immediately in view of the grim situation they are encountering because of the stray canine menace.