A shocking incident took place in Coimbatore where two infants died within 24 hours after receiving the pentavalent, rotavirus vaccines, and oral polio. Both the infants aged around two-and-a-half months.
According to the reports, the first baby suffered difficulty in breathing after getting the vaccines when the family rushed him to a nearby hospital, where the baby was referred to Coimbatore Medical College Hospital.
The baby on arrival at CMCH, was declared dead. Speaking to the media, the parents of the baby said that vaccines caused their child’s death.
“The vaccination was done by the nurse at the Anganwadi. But when we returned home, the child kept crying and refused to breastfeed, after which I gave him four drops of the syrup that was given to me by the hospital. However, within hours, he started developing breathing issues. We took him to the hospital where the doctors referred us to the Coimbatore Medical College Hospital. On reaching there, our child was declared brought dead,” the child’s mother told the media.
However, the health department has disagrees that the cause of the deaths was due to the administration of the vaccines.
Health officials were quoted that, “Postmortem revealed the death of one infant due to pneumonia and the cause of the other death was yet to be ascertained.”
In another incident, on Wednesday morning the child was administered both the rotavirus and polio vaccines. Unlike the first child, the second child had no symptoms and problem in breathing and he went to sleep at 12 am on Thursday.
However, he did not wake up the next morning. Seeing the child unresponsive, the parents took him to the hospital where he was declared brought dead.
The Coimbatore Health Department following the incident, asked the Anganwadis and primary health centres (PHCs) not to use a particular batch of vaccines following the death of two infants a couple of days ago.
They said, since the parents were panicky, the department ordered not to use the particular batch of paediatric vaccines until further orders, even as the condition of nearly 35 babies vaccinated at both the centres was reported normal.
The Tamil Nadu Health Secretary J Radhakrishnan has said an internal inquiry has been launched.
