A three member high level team has been appointed by the Kerala Government to investigate into the issue of around 35 children falling sick after they were administered Tetanus vaccine last month, at Kozhikode.

The team comprising Sanjeev, neurology professor at Thiruvananthapuram based Sri Chitra Hospital, V Jayakumar, Professor of medicine department, Trivandrum Medical College and K Venugopal, HOD of cardiology department, Calicut Medical College, will be investigating into the issue.

According to Kerala Drug Control Department sources, the Tetanus Vaccine (adsorbed) IP 5 ml batch no TT 5095 23 A, manufactured by Mumbai based Haffkine Biopharmaceutical limited was administered on around 321 students at National Higher Secondary School in Vattoli, Kozhikode, of which nearly 35 children reportedly fell sick. The children were showing symptoms of headache, nausea and fever and were admitted to Calicut Medical College. The postmortem report of the student who died is awaited.

The Drug Control Department has sent the samples collected from Kozhikode and Thiruvananthapuram to Central Research Institute in Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh and the results are expected to arrive by the end of January. "We had already collected the samples from Calicut and upon understanding that some cases had come to Thiruvananthapuram too, we collected them and sent it for testing. The high level team will carry out the investigations on the cause of the student's death and the cause of the children falling sick. Parallel to this, the Drug Control Department will also probe into vaccine aspect of the issue. We have sent a detailed report to the Drug Controller of India," said informed sources. Around 26,000 vials of the vaccine had arrived in Kozhikode alone. Now field data is being collected.

The issue of whether these vaccines were properly stored is also under scrutiny. The tetanus vaccines have to be stored under a temperature of minimum 2 to maximum 8 degree centigrade. Sources said that during the initial investigations no violation of the storage norms had been detected and further enquiry will be conducted.

An expert in the field sharing his view on the issue said," On general terms, the quality of the vaccine has to be ensured right through the manufacturing, transportation, storage and dispension. Secondly, certain guidelines should be followed in the usage of vaccines, there should be regular follow-up after the vaccination and there should be monitoring of the follow up, which is lacking here.

The entire system should be reviewed." He said that regularly samples from the market had to be taken and analyzed to ensure sustained potency of the vaccine. " The entire aspect of vaccination has to be reviewed as vaccination can do more damage than good if it is not properly monitored," he added.