A nurse administers vaccine to a patient at Anugrah Narayan Magadh Medical College and Hospital in Gaya on Friday. Picture by Suman

Gaya, Oct. 7: Over a month after the outbreak and 58 deaths later, the district officials are struggling to acquire vaccines that can possibly stop the onslaught of suspected Japanese encephalitis here.

In the past two days, four more deaths occurred and 17 new patients suffering from suspected encephalitis were admitted to Anugrah Narayan Magadh Medical College and Hospital (ANMMCH).

Considering the gravity of the situation, a special immunisation drive was launched in Gaya on the directive of district civil surgeon Dilip Kumar.

However, because of unavailability of the required number of Japanese encephalitis vaccines, all children in Gaya could not be immunised and there is need for more vaccines.

In view of the requirement, district immunisation officer Shreedhar Upadhyay has requested the state immunisation officer of the Bihar State Health Society to make available more vaccines soon.

According to an estimate, around 2 lakh vaccines are required to immunise all the children of the district.

On the other hand, the Bihar State Health Society made only 21,000 vaccines available here since October 2010, while 30,000 vaccines were brought from Siwan, Gopalganj and Nawada districts.

Dilip told The Telegraph that a special drive has been launched to immunise the children between one and 15 years of age.

The drive was carried out in the Mahadalit Tolas and so far the drive has covered about 71 villages in Gaya district.

Apart from vaccination, malathion fogging was also being carried out in the villages from where cases of suspected Japanese encephalitis have been reported.

Vaccination for Japanese encephalitis has been included in the routine immunisation too.

So far, 21,079 vials (a small glass vessel or bottle used to store medication as liquids) of Japanese encephalitis, including 3,900 on October 27, 2010, and 4,000 each on January 20, March 25 and May 5, 2011 and 5,179 on June 7, 2011, were made available from the State Health Society, Patna.

However, because of shortage nearly 30,256 vaccines, including 12,000 on August 17 and 6,900 on September 14 and 11,356 on September 21 from Siwan, Nawada and Gopalganj respectively were brought to Gaya. “If there is a demand for more vaccines here, it will be made available,” the civil surgeon added.

The Japanese encephalitis vaccines were made available at all the 24 primary health centres of the district to carry out the routine immunisation. Under the routine immunisation drive, children between the age group of 16 months and 24 months are vaccinated.

However, under the special immunisation drive, directives have been given to vaccinate all children below 15 years of age.

One vial of Japanese encephalitis vaccine can immunise five children. However, once the vial has been opened and only two or three children are vaccinated, the remaining amount of vaccine serves no purpose. Thus, on an average, one vial serves three to four children.

Moreover, according to the brochure of the vaccine that has been imported from China, the vaccine should be repeated thrice to complete the immunisation.

If a child has been vaccinated for the first time at the age of eight months, the vaccine should be repeated when the child turns twoyears and seven years. But the children here are being vaccinated just once. When asked, the civil surgeon said: “We are acting according to the guidelines of the Bihar State Health Society.”