While health authorities in the country are leaving no stone unturned to vaccinate the entire adult population against Covid-19, they are now facing an unexpected challenge, a shortage of syringes and needles. This is because, country’s biggest syringe manufacturer Hindustan Syringes and Medical Devices Ltd has shut down its plants in Faridabad on the orders of the Haryana Pollution Control Board.
Reportedly, Haryana Pollution Control Board has asked 228 units in Faridabad to shut down, and the HMD plants are among them.
HMD makes almost 66% of syringes used in India, and is the largest manufacturer of auto-disable syringes in the world. Therefore, the closure of its plants is set to impact the entire healthcare sector in the country, along with the ongoing vaccination program against Coronavirus. The company has been ordered to shut its plants despite its claims that its use of diesel generators is minimal, as the plants mainly run on grid power and PNG based captive plants.
“We have been asked to shut down our needles and syringes plants in Faridabad along with the factories of several other companies,” HMD Managing Director Rajiv Nath told the media informing the development. He said that the company produces 1.5 crore needles and 80 lakh syringes daily, which has stopped completely.
“As we can’t feed needles beyond two days buffer stock from Monday, other factories fed by the mother unit will be shut and daily 1.2 crore syringes will not be available nationally,” he further said. Nath informed that syringes are already in short supply in India and globally, and the union government has put in export restrictions to ensure domestic availability. He informed that the industries are being asked to shut down voluntarily by the board, to avoid prosecution and sealing of the units, and the company complied with the order.
Rajiv Nath, who is also the Forum Coordinator of the Association of Indian Medical Devices Industry, has already sent a letter to the Prime Minister’s Office, urging that syringes manufacturing facilities be declared as making products of national importance under the National Disaster Management Act, and that they should be exempted from the Pollution Control Board order. The company has also written to the health ministry seeking exemption from the order.
He informed that the power supply from Haryana’s power utility is stable, and most of the company’s captive power plants are run by environmentally friendly piped natural gas, and only some small plants are connected to diesel generators. “The pollution board thought the plants were running on diesel generator sets. We assured them we have not been doing it, but they were not convinced,” Nath said.
We claim to be the largest AD Syringes Mfr in the world not largest for assorted syringes n are confused that we were asked to run during full shut down of Covid n now asked to stop operations without a rational review of our request n the fact that this factory run mainly on PNG
— Rajiv Nath (@RojerNath) December 11, 2021
Rajiv Nath also posted on Twitter saying that while they were asked to continue operating their plants when the entire country was shut due to the lockdown, now they are asked to shut down when other plants have opened. He also noted that they were asked to stop operations without a rational review of their request and the fact that their factory runs mainly on PNG.
HMD manufactures the well-known Dispovan brand of syringes, and supplies to global health bodies like UNICEF and GAVI. It is also one of the few industries in the world that manufactures single-use auto-disable syringes and needles.
