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India heading for massive syringe /needles vacuum: Rajiv Nath

Rajiv Nath urges the government to consider the decision and assured that it will abide by the rules to control pollution

Rajiv Nath, MD, HMD, who is also the Forum Coordinator of Association of Indian Medical Devices Industry, in a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, urged that syringes manufacturing facilities should be allowed to run under National Disaster Management Act to avoid national healthcare crisis in curative healthcare as well for much needed COVID-19 vaccination programme.

Hindustan Syringes and Medical Devices (HMD), along with more than 228 large factories of Faridabad has been asked to shut down its factories ‘voluntarily’ as part of a pollution-control drive undertaken by authorities in the National Capital Region (NCR). HMD alone contributes to over 66 per cent of syringe supplies in India for curative healthcare and immunisation.

Raising his concern, Rajiv Nath, MD, HMD said, “At this location HMD daily produces 1.5 crore needles and 80 lakh syringes. This has come to a halt now. The closure of needles and syringes manufacturing factories will disrupt the supply chain which may impact healthcare delivery across the country in general and the Covid-19 vaccination programme, in particular, resulting in major shortage and other related issues.”

Nath shared that most of HMD’s plants run on environmentally friendly piped natural gas (PNG). We have captive PNG-based power generation. We do have standby Diesel Gensets, but are hardly used since we have PNG that’s far cheaper and pollution-free. We are not a polluting industry and one of our plants just got the Gold Certification for Green Building for meeting sustainability standards.”

Nath, who is also the Forum Coordinator of the Association of Indian Medical Devices Industry has urged the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and other administrative ministries that syringes manufacturing facilities and other covid Critical Medical Devices should be allowed to run under National Disaster Management Act to avoid National Health Care crisis in Curative Healthcare as well for much needed COVID-19 vaccination programme.

In a letter to Arvind Kumar Nautiyal, The Member Secretary, Commission for Air Quality Management, NCR & AA, Nath informed that HMD is manufacturing Covid-19 critical medical devices i.e. syringes for COVID-19 vaccination and are running their operations with PNG of 4.3 mega watt since 2011. Nath requested Kumar to withdraw the order or make an exception looking at the critical nature of running their operation for the COVID-19 vaccination in India as well as globally to avoid any big National healthcare crisis as over 2/3 of India depends on HMD. Other countries are also counting on India to support global immunisation/vaccination projects mainly for children.

“We understand and appreciate the concerns of the government and we fully support the pollution drive. We assure the government that we will not use our diesel generator sets and have fully equipped our plants with renewable energy sources like PNG, solar power energy and direct power access feeders. We are with the government in every step to help combat the pollution level and encourage sustainability in our daily lifestyle,” he said.

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