A token consignment of India's first genetically engineered hepatitis-B vaccine, Shanvac-B, developed and manufactured by Shanta Biotechnics, has been delivered to UNICEF on Monday. UNICEF's state representative William P Thompson received the consignment from Heavy Industries Minister K Vidyadhar Rao.

The first consignment of 1.5 million doses of the vaccine would be shipped to Coppenhagen and later distributed in Albania, Tajkistan and Turkmenistan. Shanta, which got the WHO approval for the vaccine in June this year, making it the first Indian firm to get the certification, would be supplying eight million doses at the rate of 50 cents per dose, during 2002-03, according to Shanta managing director, K I Varaprasad Reddy.

Delivering the first consignment to UNICEF, the Minister said now that WHO had approved the vaccine, the state government would buy its requirements from Shanta for its vaccination programme under the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation. The government would have to get the vaccine from WHO approved manufacturers through UNICEF for the programme. The State government would require about 2.5 million doses every year.

Vidyadhar Rao said the state government had decided to create a corpus fund of Rs 10 crore for promoting research and development in the bulk drug and pharmaceutical sector. The Centre had also agreed to provide matching grants for such an initiative. The state had already formed a Task Force for the development of the sector with Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu as Chairman and Vidyadhar Rao as Vice-Chairman. The government was also setting up an exclusive Pharma City in Visakhapatnam.

The Minister said unless the drug companies concentrated on R&D and protected Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), they would be badly hit in the WTO era. The government would support the efforts of Indian companies and researchers and had written to the Centre to promote these initiatives, he said.