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'Universal' immunizations get a boost in India

Nature Medicine volume 16, page 497 (2010)Cite this article

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A Correction to this article was published on 01 June 2010

This article has been updated

The economic liberalization that began in India two decades ago might have produced an unwanted side effect—the production of vaccines against illnesses such as measles and tetanus seems to be threatened by the disappearance of more than a dozen government-owned vaccine producers. Now, in response partly to calls made by some parliament members, the Indian health ministry might move to reverse its shift toward leaning on the private sector and pay greater attention to these public sector producers (in which the government owns a majority stake) when it comes to vaccine production.

A 7.6 billion rupee ($170 million) revival package was, as Nature Medicine went to press, still awaiting a cabinet nod to perk up the almost 50-year-old, government-owned Indian Drugs and Pharmaceuticals Limited (IDPL), the country’s largest public sector producer of drugs and pharmaceuticals. “We are on a path to recovery, and I am confident IDPL will very soon come out of the stigma of being sick,” says its managing director Jayashree Gupta.

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Change history

  • 04 June 2010

    The article ‘‘Universal’ immunizations get a boost in India’ (Nat. Med. 16, 497, 2010), described the Indian Drugs and Pharmaceuticals Limited as “the largest vaccine producer of its kind.” However, although the company is the country’s largest public-sector producer of drugs and pharmaceuticals, it is not the largest vaccine producer. The text should have read “A 7.6 billion rupee ($170 million) revival package was, as Nature Medicine went to press, still awaiting a cabinet nod to perk up the almost 50-year-old, government-owned Indian Drugs and Pharmaceuticals Limited (IDPL), the country’s largest public sector producer of drugs and pharmaceuticals.” The error has been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.

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  1. Bangalore, India

    Killugudi Jayaraman

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  1. Killugudi Jayaraman
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Jayaraman, K. 'Universal' immunizations get a boost in India. Nat Med 16, 497 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm0510-497a

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