COVID vaccination likely to hit as syringe plants in Faridabad asked to shut

Chennai: The closure of needles and syringes manufacturing factories located in Haryana's Faridabad, adjoining Delhi, as a part of controlling emissions in the NCR will impact healthcare delivery across the country in general and the Covid-19 vaccination programme in particular, said a top official of Hindustan Syringes and Medical Devices Ltd (HMD).

"We have been asked to shut down our needles and syringes plants in Faridabad along with the factories of several other companies," HMD Managing Director Rajiv Nath told IANS.

"We daily produce 1.5 crore needles and 80 lakh syringes. This has come to a halt now. As we can't feed needles beyond two days buffer stock from Monday, other factories fed by the mother unit will be shut and daily 1.2 crore syringes will not be available nationally," he said.

According to him, syringes are already running short in India and globally and the government has put in export restrictions.

The expectation was that the export restriction will be lifted by December end as peak demand ebbed post Diwali, he added.

Read also: Govt imposes export curbs on syringes to discourage outbound shipments

Nath, who is also the Forum Coordinator of Association of Indian Medical Devices Industry, in a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, urged that syringes manufacturing facilities be declared as making products of national importance under the National Disaster Management Act.

He said the power supply from Haryana's power utility is stable and most of the company's gensets are powered by environmentally friendly piped natural gas.

Only small plants of HMD are connected to diesel gensets, Nath added.

He said HMD contributes over 66 per cent of India's syringes supplies for curative healthcare and immunisation.

Disruption in the supply chain would result in shortage and other related issues like price increases.

Read also: Shortage of 2 billion syringes in 2022, warns WHO