The Centre will establish a new state-of-the-art vaccine manufacturing facility in the public sector soon to meet the exploding requirements of several vaccines in the country. Availability of vaccines in the country has become grim with the suspension of vaccine production by the 3 public sector units a few months ago.

After several states have written to the Centre about the acute shortage of vaccines supply, the Union health ministry is pushing the idea of setting up a new facility for vaccine production at the earliest, sources said, adding that the project details would be available soon.

It is also likely that the new unit would be set up at the proposed Rs 150-crore vaccine park in Tamil Nadu, which has been entrusted to HLL for conducting the feasibility study. Meanwhile, the ministry is finalizing the procedures to procure vaccines from the domestic suppliers for the immunization programmes during the transitory phase.

Kerala and Uttar Pradesh have already written to the Centre about the shortage of vaccines with the advent of monsoon. Kerala is having only a limited stock of diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus (DPT) and diphtheria-tetanus (DT) vaccines. The State has already recorded four deaths due to diphtheria and it was reported to be spreading to places like Malappuram, the Centre was told. The stock of vaccines for Hepatitis- B vaccine and measles in the state will be exhausted by August, the State health minister said in a letter to Union Health Minister Dr Ambumani Ramadoss.

UP also has written to the Centre about the shortage of Tetanus Toxoid vaccine. The state used to get its supplies from Central Research Institute (CRI), Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh and Pasteur Institute of India (PII), Conoor, Tamil Nadu - two of the three central PSUs which have stopped production. "We require around 1.5 crore doses of the vaccine each year as around 60 lakh pregnant women are given two doses each. This year, we have received just 10 lakh doses. We have written to the Centre for more and hopefully they will supply us with adequate stocks soon, "the State has informed the Centre.

The crisis is expected to spread to more states as the three closed PSU units - CRI, PII and BCG Vaccine Lab, Chennai used to meet 60-70 per cent of the immunisation requirements at a low cost. And none of the States is in a position to procure vaccines from the private sector as no funds had been allocated for the purpose.