Tripura Urges Health Ministry to Probe Deaths After Japanese Encephalitis Vaccine

The Tripura government has urged the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare to send an expert team to investigate the death of three school children in the last three days after being vaccinated against Japanese Encephalitis (JE) in West Tripura. Japanese Encephalitis vaccination drive was launched in West Tripura, Sepahijala and Khowai districts of Tripura, two weeks ago as part of the nationwide immunization program, targeting children between the age group of 1 to 15 years. So far, 207,986 children of 1-15 years have been vaccinated in Tripura.

Three children have died in different parts of West Tripura district, all of them have history of JE vaccination.

State Health Secretary M.Nagaraju said, "We have formed a high-level committee to investigate the matter, but initial probe showed that there was nothing wrong with the vaccines. It is possible that the children were suffering from other ailments. The committee would submit its report within a week."

The deaths might be due to negligence of the health workers who administered the vaccine, as there was no hazardous JE vaccine supplied by the Union Health and Family Welfare ministry, said Nagaraju.

"As per clinical reports, Krittika Das (10) of Kenamia in the Kamalasagar area died due to measles and not JE vaccine. Similarly, Ariful Ishlam Maishan (12) of Srimantapur village in Sonamura died due to multi-organ dysfunction syndrome. The cause of death of Shoheli Debbarma (14) of Mandai at AMRI Hospital, Kolkata, is yet to be known," said Nagaraju.

Source-Medindia