The All India Syringe and Needle Manufacturers Association (AISNMA), the nodal body for domestic syringe manufacturers, has urged the Government to lift the restriction on non-covid size of syringes. These syringes include insulin syringes, 5 ml and larger syringe sizes or 0.3 ml auto – disable (AD) syringes developed for Pfizer.
“Since these syringes have been developed for Pfizer, they can’t be used in India for vaccination and will be a wasted capacity otherwise,” AISNMA stated.
The Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) recently issued a notification saying that the export policy for syringes with or without needles has been amended from “free” to “restricted”.
Rajiv Nath, President, AISNMA said, “Government should place orders for AD syringes with the manufacturers in India well in advance so that the latter could ramp up supplies. Clarity should be given of India’s quarterly needs for calendar year 2022 as we can’t plan on a 2 to 4 months window horizon basis. To ramp up capacity, we need an order confirmation at least nine months to a year in advance.”
“Countries are counting on India to support global immunization and vaccination projects mainly for children for Yellow Fever or Measles, Hepatitis B, Pentavalent or BCG etc. Those are not the syringes used for COVAX Supplies of 0.5 AD etc. We cannot deprive those children from those immunization commitments as those syringes will anyways not be used for Covid vaccination in India and will lie unused in our factories causing us huge losses. This is our ongoing global contractual commitments to support global vaccination projects,” he further added.
“The supply chain management is currently challenged temporarily due to the peak seasonal spike in demand for standard disposable syringes for Dengue and Typhoid etc. This will ease by mid November but as of now it’s important to focus on non-covid care as priority one. This can be followed with vaccination preventive care and then exports but turning off the tap suddenly is disruptive as it will create problems for the Indian syringe manufacturers choking their production lines,” said Vimal Khemka, Secretary, AISNMA.
It is very prudent to plan on time for drug delivery of these vaccines for ensuring timely availability of the correct size of syringes for vaccination of 1.3 billion people in India as different vaccines need different types of syringes.
COVID-19 crisis has shown that the Indian Syringe manufacturers sector can rise to the challenge.
Hindustan Syringes & Medical Devices Ltd (HMD) alone has supplied 484 million pieces to Government of India till date to help vaccinate over 650 million people. Presently HMD is producing more than 4.2 lakh syringes of various types per hour at its factories spread over 11 acres in Faridabad industrial district in Haryana.
To help in vaccinating India against Covid, HMD has reserved maximum capacity for India. HMD presently is not accepting any export orders from many overseas potential buyers.
“In line with PM Modi’s plans to resume export of surplus COVID-19 vaccines in the fourth quarter of 2021 in order to fulfill the commitment of India towards COVAX, we at HMD are confident that India will also be in a position to export Covid vaccine syringes as part of ‘Vaccine Maitri’ to fulfill India’s commitment towards the world for the collective fight against COVID-19,” Nath concluded.
