Tragedy struck Palamu district when a vaccination drive held at a government-run health centre in Jharkhand on Saturday, April 7, 2018, claimed the lives of three infants. Six others have been taken in sick. Officials said that the children developed fever, diarrhoea and vomiting in shortly after they were vaccinated at a local Anganwadi centre by auxiliary nurses. By Sunday morning, four of the eleven children who were vaccinated died.

An inquiry team have been appointed to look into the matter. Earlier it was thought that the medicines administered to the children were past its expiry date, but the inquiry has not been able to come to that conclusion. Also, the cold chain required to maintain the quality of the vaccine has also not been disturbed. So the team have not been able to ascertain why the vaccines have led to the deaths of so many infants, giving rise to the questions as to what went wrong following the vaccinations.

Dr Om Srivastava, Consultant – Infectious Diseases and Immunology, says that the incidences infant deaths after immunisation is very rare. “The incidence is as less as 0.1 to 0.5 percent,” he says. He, however, names some other reasons that could have contributed to the infant deaths.

Preservatives

Some of the preservatives in the vaccines include aluminium, egg protein, formaldehyde and the mercury-containing chemical known as thimerosal preserve the medicines from preventing bacterial and fungal contaminations. One of the causes for the infant deaths could be a reaction to these chemicals.

Contaminants

Sometimes, the drug itself may not be the culprit. But the instruments used to administer it, like the needle or the syringe, themselves may be contaminated with bacteria like Staphylococcus aureus, which may endanger the lives of the babies through toxic shock syndrome.

Anaphylaxis

The infants may have developed an anaphylactic reaction or an acute allergic reaction to the vaccines administered to them. Some of the gastrointestinal reactions exhibited by the infants such as diarrhoea and vomiting could be a result of an allergic reaction.

Myocardial Infarction

In some cases, certain vaccines can cause myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscles) or arrhythmia (irregular heart beats) in infants.

Weakened immune system

Vaccines can turn deadly in babies who are severely immunocompromised due to malnutrition or otherwise. Dr. Shrivastava says that a weakened immune system can make anything worse, however, it cannot be the primary cause of the infant deaths.

“Complications resulting from compromised immune system manifest gradually over time. Since the deaths happened overnights, other causes have to be explored apart from a weak immunity,” he adds.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Apr 09, 2018 08:04 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).