Carrying the Make In India program forward, the India’s federal government has approved four medical device parks in the country. According to The Hindu newspaper, the medical parks (manufacturing zones) aimed at enabling world-class treatment at affordable prices will be established in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Besides these states, Uttarakhand and Gujarat are also keen to attract new medical manufacturing sites.
Sources said the parks will provide the infrastructure to medical device manufacturing companies where they can easily come and install their setup. “The support to medical equipment manufacturing companies will help easy access to standard testing facilities and reduce the cost of production,” they were quoted as saying. Moreover, to make this initiative scalable, the government is proposing to fund up to $3.2 Million of the cost of setting up of a “Common Facility Center” (CFC) at each park.
But manufacturers are busy doing the math. They expect the government to need at least 500 million syringes by July, in addition to the 300 million that it orders for the annual immunisation drive. And post July, there will be an additional demand for Covid-19 vaccination syringes. Hence, the industry expects a significant shortage, given that they will also have global commitments.
“We are now manufacturing what we project to be the demand from the health ministry till March. This will be completed by December this year and we will stockpile it at risk. In January, if the government suddenly needs syringes for a Covid19 vaccine, we will have the spare capacity to make them quickly. Else, we will give our stockpiled production to UNICEF,” explained Rajiv Nath, managing director, HMD.
HMD is expanding its syringe making capacity in phases. It aims to raise it to 800 million (from the current 720 million) by the year end, and to one billion pieces by June next year. “We can take it up to 1.5 billion if we have proper contracts,” Nath said.
HMD is slated to supply 140 million syringes to vaccine alliance body COVAX, of which it has shipped 56 million pieces already, and is ready to dispatch another 28 million. Nath pointed out that while vaccines ship by air, syringes are transported by sea freight. If a mass immunisation drive is planned somewhere, syringes need to be shipped at least three months ahead of the date.
Pavan Mocherla, managing director, Becton Dickinson – India and South Asia, said, “Several countries and institutions such as the UNICEF and Gavi have already placed orders with us for the delivery of syringes for Covid vaccination.” He added that the Indian government had not given any indication of its requirement as yet.
The second aspect of planning for raising syringe manufacturing capacity is based on the extent of public and private vaccination, because the government uses AD syringes, and the private market mostly uses disposable syringes.
“Let’s assume that 70 per cent of the 1.3 billion people will be vaccinated. That means 900 million people need to be given a jab, which requires 1.8 billion syringes. If it is done entirely by the government, then all would be AD syringes, but if it is a 60:40 government-private divide, then almost 800 million syringes will be disposable. We need clarity on this soon,” Nath said.
