Thaindian News

New Delhi, May 9 (IANS) The panel report on the clinical trial of the cervical cancer vaccine drive in Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh, which left seven tribal girls dead, was slammed by member of parliament Brinda Karat and rights groups here Monday.

Karat, in a letter to Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, raised questions over the “conflict of interests” among the members of the probe panel, the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI), the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and other members of the committee.

The panel was meant to look into aspects of the vaccination drive including the linkages of the deaths with the vaccine as well as the ethics and implementation of the project.

The trials were conducted by the American NGO PATH in collaboration with the ICMR and the state governments of Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat.

“The question is not about the vaccine per se. In my letter to the health minister, I have asked the nature of the project conducted by PATH, how did it obtain consent from the poor minors in tribal districts of the states, why was there no discussion on safety of children, and why was the project given to a foreign NGO in the first place,” Karat said here.

The interim report of the vaccination trial had stated: “There was no major ethical violation in the conduct of the study.”

“We want strong action to be taken against people with vested interests in the ethics committee and ICMR who managed to conceal the protocols of biomedical research through this vaccination drive,” added Karat, a Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) Rajya Sabha member.

The ministry had earlier stopped the trials of two imported brands of the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccines, namely Gardasil and Cervarix April last year.

The committee probing the alleged deaths after administering the vaccine consisted of doctors from the ICMR and All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).