: India’s Journey From Requesting Penicillin in 1947 to Making Vaccines for the World #IndiaNEWS #Coronavirus If the phrase ‘in record time’ holds true for anything, it’s for the race to develop

India’s Journey From Requesting Penicillin in 1947 to Making Vaccines for the World #IndiaNEWS #Coronavirus
If the phrase ‘in record time’ holds true for anything, it’s for the race to develop the COVID-19 vaccine. This is an effort that countries across the world have unanimously worked for in the last year since the pandemic wreaked havoc in our lives. The National Geographic said that a vaccine typically takes 10-15 years to reach the public. But vaccines to combat the coronavirus have come through faster than any other we’ve seen in history so far.
Right now, India has approved two vaccines for emergency use — Serum Institute’s Covishield and Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin. Recently, Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said that India may see more vaccines being approved for emergency use in the next few months. Moreover, the Serum Institute of India said it will ship the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine to Canada in less than a month after a conversation between the prime ministers of the two countries ensued earlier this week.
However, this association between the two countries is age-old. India and Canada have stood by each for decades now, despite a recent kink when Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau supported the ongoing farmer agitation in the country.
A brief history
Decades ago, in the aftermath of the Partition of India, when the country was distraught with bloodshed and the displacement of millions, India reached out to Canada for doses of penicillin for a campaign against Malaria. But to understand why this exchange took place, a brief context of India’s state in terms of vaccine development needs to be first understood.
In the 19th century, Ukrainian biologist Dr Waldemar Haffkine introduced India to the cholera vaccine, which he had developed while studying in Paris. The British Raj at the time asked him to stay back and develop a vaccine for the plague afflicting the country in 1896. A year later, Haffkine had invented the first vaccine for the plague, which arguably became the first vaccine to be developed in India.
Dr Waldemar Haffkine (Wikipedia)
In his paper, A Brief History of Vaccines and Vaccinations in India, Chandrakant Lahariya wrote that towards the beginning of the 20th century, socio-scientific-geopolitical events had a heavy impact on vaccination efforts in the country. Some of these changes included the First World War, which took precedence for the government, despite it coinciding with the Influenza Pandemic. Most significant among these, Lahariya says, was the Government Act of 1919, which delegated administrative powers from the Centre to the provinces. This included these local self-governments to be assigned the responsibility of providing healthcare, including the smallpox vaccine.

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