How to stop begging for vaccines

Friday 2nd April, 2021

The government would have the public believe that a possible delay in Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine imports from India will not affect the ongoing vaccination drive here; there are enough doses for the booster shots, it says. Large stocks of Covid-19 vaccines are arriving from China and Russia. Will the government tell us to get the Chinese/Russian vaccines if Oxford-AstraZeneca jab is not available?

Our vaccine woes are of our own making. Time was when we met out vaccine needs thanks to the Medical Research Institute (MRI). The British may be blamed for many things, but their rule was not without any benefits for this country. The MRI is a case in point. They established it as one of the best medical research outfits in the region, and Sri Lanka was able to produce vaccines until about 1980.

President of the College of Medical Laboratory Science, Ravi Kumudesh, has been quoted by this newspaper as saying that at present the MRI cannot even test imported vaccines properly let alone produce them. The only thing the MRI is capable of doing is to test labels of the phials of vaccines, Kumudesh has said, adding that it is a task that can be done in an ordinary office. His claim has gone unchallenged.

Successive governments, whose leaders never miss an opportunity to wax eloquent on their contribution to what they call national progress, have neglected the MRI. If they had cared to continue with the good work of the British and develop the MRI, we would not have had to go begging for COVID-19 vaccines, and perhaps we would have been able to make a significant contribution to the world’s war on the virus by producing quality vaccines.

The pandemic will not go away, and the world will have to learn to live with it, experts warn. Nobody knows what other epidemics or pandemics the world will have to contend with, in time to come. Sri Lanka, therefore, had better do everything in its power to prevent itself from being at the mercy of other nations for its vaccine needs as far as possible. The need to revitalise the MRI, therefore, cannot be overemphasised.

The Jayewardenepura University lab, which was established to conduct dengue-related experiments, is now doing what the MRI should be doing in respect of coronavirus. It has acquired the Next Generation Sequencing technology to identify the variants of the runaway virus. If the J’pura lab can do so, why can’t the MRI? This is the question that the government ought to answer. Funds for acquiring technologies necessary for the country’s battle against COVID-19 will not be a problem. The government can curtail the cost of maintaining ministers and other politicians; if some of the V-8s or other such super luxury vehicles placed at the disposal of the ruling party grandees are disposed of, funds for developing the MRI will not be a problem. Or, the international lending institutions are sure to fund such projects because they know that, as the WHO has wisely said about the current pandemic and global health, no country will be safe until every country is safe. Will the government explain why it has not cared to equip the MRI properly and tap its full potential for the benefit of the country?

What is urgently needed is to develop the MRI as a premier medical research facility in keeping with its forgotten mission and vision so that the country will not be dependent entirely on other nations for its vaccine needs. This task requires a radical shake-up of the MRI and the reorientation of its focus, which is currently on medical testing, which can be left to other health institutions such as hospitals.

The incumbent government is sparing no pains to promote the domestic production of turmeric of all things. The question is why it is not making a similar effort to develop the MRI to resume vaccine production. Retracing our steps to find what went wrong with this vital institution is half the battle in developing it to meet the present-day challenges.