India must debate ill-effects of compulsory vaccination
"India must debate the
ill-effects of compulsory vaccination"
- - Jacob Puliyel, Head of Paediatrics
Department, St Stephen’s Hospital, New Delhi
The
fact that compulsory vaccination will serve any special purpose is pure bunkum.
Let’s cite an example here. It is well established that if sterilisation is
made compulsory, it would control population surge. However, in the case of
vaccines we are not sure that they are efficacious, even if 100 per cent of the
population is covered.
The Pentavalent
vaccine, which replaced DPT (diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus), and now comes
with a combination of H influenza B and Hepatitis B, has been officially proven
to have caused deaths not just in Sri Lanka, but even in India.
The
vaccine was suspended in our neighbouring country as a result of the
fatalities. The Indian government replied to an RTI application that it caused
13 deaths in Kerala, three in Haryana and four in Tamil Nadu in 2015. However,
whenever a death occurs in India, the exact reason is never brought in the
public domain.
The
new classification of the World Health Organization tries to do the same and we
have written papers saying so in many peer-reviewed journals.
Generally,
vaccine hesitancy in India is pushed aside as ignorance of a community, but no
sustained efforts have been made to counter the perception. The very fact that
measles-rubella (MR) vaccine faced opposition in Tamil Nadu and Kerala is a
pointer to the fact that it is not only ignorance. In many cases, there is an
informed debate. So, it is better to tell people the pros and cons clearly.
Nobody likes to deprive children, and an informed decision will help in this case.
When
the MR vaccine was pushed in Delhi and people went to the high court, the court
instructed the government that an informed consent should be sought from
parents. There is no data about congenital rubella in Delhi as per the
government’s own admission. There are many cases where vaccines are being
pushed on a large-scale for a virtually non-existent problem. This was the case
for the Hepatitis B vaccine.
Word
about poor vaccination being responsible for measles outbreak in the US is not
beyond doubt. In the US, many states, as a knee-jerk reaction, are making it
compulsory now. There will be unforeseen effects of this in countries like
India. It will try to do the same on the lines of the US. This may be a big
conspiracy theory to make a blind push for vaccine by manufacturers.
The
proponents of compulsory vaccination say that in India, where morbidity and
mortality rates are high, vaccines should be pushed. I strongly suggest that in
a resource-deficit country like ours, it is ridiculous to allocate a large
portion of a small health budget to an initiative, the efficacy of which is
doubtful. It is both bad science and administration.
Therefore,
more than any other country, India must make a push to engage in a debate on
the ill-effects of compulsory vaccination.
(This
debate was first published in Down To Earth's print edition dated 1-15 July,
2019)
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