As the Union government is sharpening on early making the coronavirus vaccine available soon, experts on Saturday emphasised that India should immediately scale up syringe supplies to deal with the vast number of inoculations required to control the pandemic.
Experts said as India is getting ready for the coronavirus vaccine, the government should be well-equipped with a secured stock of syringes in advance.
According to Rajiv Nath, Managing Director of Hindustan Syringes & Medical Devices Ltd, the estimated demand in India would be around 900 million pieces of different kinds of syringes for just one shot of the vaccine, considering 60-70 per cent of the country gets vaccinated.
Nath told the media, "The number would amplify to 1.8 billion if the vaccine India chooses needs two shots.”
The use of ‘auto-disabled’ syringes in the Covid-19 vaccine immunisation programme has been a focus by the experts.
"The focus has shifted to single-use disposable consumables from reuse consumables and especially a change has been seen in the higher deployment of auto-disabled syringes even for curative injections," Nath said.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF have also recommended that for administering vaccines -- particularly in mass immunisation programmes, auto-disabled syringes must be used.
Besides, the WHO has suggested the using auto-disabled syringes to collect blood samples of Covid-19 patients, by which transmission of the virus through healthcare equipment can be evaded.
Speaking on the function of auto-disabled syringes and their role in the Covid-19 vaccine immunisation programme, Pavan Mocherla, Managing Director of Beckton Dickinson (BD) - India and South Asia, an American multinational medical technology company, said, "Auto-disabled syringes are the ones that get disabled after a single use."
Mocherla explaining the importance of performing safe injection practices during the Covid-19 vaccine immunisation programme said that unsafe injection methods could lead to blood-borne infections such as HIV, Hepatitis B and C. Thus, attention must be paid to correct injection technique while managing the immunisation drive.
"It is critically important to make sure that the healthcare workers are supplied with the right injection devices that will ultimately be needed to deliver a vaccine to help support India's 1.3 billion population," he added.
Also Read: Covid-19: study suggests individuals with rare autoimmune disorders at death risk during Corona
The experts also assert that it is important to introduce our nurses to procedures like the implementation of the latest technologies such as auto-disable syringes and precautions to ensure safety for themselves as well as others.
Mocherla noted, "To protect the population from contracting HIV, Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C while getting preventive vaccines, the Indian government has been adopting the use of single-use auto-disabled syringes in its vaccination programmes from August 2005,”