The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health and Family Welfare will seek the views of Secretary of Health Ministry and other senior officials on a number of issues including the functioning and the action plan about the three public sector vaccine manufacturing units whose working had been suspended sometime back.
The panel headed by Rajya Sabha member Amar Singh will hold the sitting in Delhi on January 6 and those to be deposed would also include the directors of the three units, namely, Central Research Institute (CRI), Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh, the Pasteur Institute of India (PII), Conoor in Tamil Nadu and the BCG Vaccine Laboratory (BCGVL), Chennai.
The committee is expected to take stock of the latest position of the government on the restructuring of the same in the wake of increasing protest from different quarters on the delay in resuming the working of the same, it is learnt. The panel had been moved by many organizations after these public sector units were closed early 2008 due to non-compliance of GMP norms as per a report by the WHO.
The secretary of the department is expected to brief the panel about the government steps so far on the units and the proposed action plan. An expert committee set up by the ministry to overhaul the institutes into testing and training laboratories had already submitted its recommendations, it is learnt.
The directors of the units, who would also be meeting the senior officials of the ministry during the day, would place their comments and views of the staff of the respective units before the panel which wants to take issue very seriously for an early solution to the crisis.
The committee will also take views of the secretary and representatives of the Medical Council of India on the public-private participation in the AIIMS-like institutes, government hospitals and district hospitals. The panel would be making a recommendation on extending the PPP model across the health sector to improve the overall functioning.
The points to come up during the sitting also would include feasibility of increasing seats at PG level and reducing the duration of specialty and super speciality courses in medical education. It would also seek the views of the ministry on the representation received from AIIMS Faculty Association on the proposed move by the authorities to implement reservation policy for SCs/Sts/OBCs in all categories of faculty posts.