Basel, Switzerland:
The swine flu pandemic may not have hit India hard in its first wave, but there are fears that the second wave which is expected in the winter could be worse. The sure way of combating this new disease is vaccination.
The first swine flu vaccine in the world was developed by the Swiss multinational Novartis and India has been in talks with the pharma giant for several months to source the vaccine.
But now, the company has told NDTV that India may just have missed out getting early supplies, simply because other countries promptly ordered while India vacillated. Novartis says it is already full up with orders and India will have to wait.
"Our H1N1 pandemic vaccine has been approved by the US and European regulatory authorities and we started to ship to the first countries in October. We do have requests from many other countries who have not ordered and we also have had discussions with India and we will definitely do the best possible to protect at least the high risk patients in India. This will take time since our production capacity has been sold out at least till March next year. But should additional capacity be available we would definitely have India as a high priority country to ship as early as possible," said Dr Andrin Oswald, CEO, Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics, Basel, Switzerland.
On its part India has been treading cautiously, not grabbing the first available vaccine since establishing safety of the new vaccine is an important concern. Now, the Novartis' swine flu vaccine can only be delivered to the high risk groups not before April 2010.
So, is it too little too late by the Indian government? Has the indecision cost India too much? We would only know later.