Investigation: India delayed crucial syringe orders – now the world will pay a price

In January, when India began its Covid-19 vaccination drive, several companies that manufacture syringes wrote letters to the health ministry, highlighting the need for the government to allow the use of conventional disposable syringes in the campaign.

Since 2005, India’s mass immunisation programme has used only auto-disable syringes whose safety locks break off after a single use, ensuring they are not reused. Conventional disposable syringes, on the other hand, can be reused, posing a risk of infection.

In their letters, the manufacturers noted that India lacked the capacity to produce the volume of auto-disable syringes required for the Covid-19 vaccination programme. Later in January, the health ministry invited them for a meeting.

“But nothing happened beyond that,” said Deepak Arora, the managing director of Bio-Med Healthcare Products Ltd, a company that makes conventional disposable syringes. “Officially, no orders came. We could not block any quantity for the government or scale up capacity.”

On July 1, as India’s Covid-19 vaccination drive was intensified, the government invited bids for 125 crore auto-disable syringes. It did not get enough bidders and was able to place just one order for 10 crore syringes.

The same month, the government finally did what the manufacturers had asked for in January – it relaxed the criteria to…

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