AP likely to get international vaccination centre

Vijayawada: Andhra Pradesh is likely to have an International Vaccination Centre soon. The state government is making efforts with the Centre for its sanction.

It is mandatory that students and others who intend to go abroad must get a vaccination certificate. This is to ensure that they do not get affected by the communicable diseases prevalent in the areas they visit.

Nearly 10,000 students from AP go to Hyderabad every year to get the vaccination certificate before they take flights to the UK, US and other countries.

The state authorities have approached the director general of health services in Delhi to get a vaccination centre sanctioned for AP. It can be accommodated at the Institute of Preventive Medicine located at Mangalagiri, officials said.

After the 2014 bifurcation, no such facility was set up in residuary AP. However, the Siddhartha Medical College got the permission to issue the vaccination certificate for Yellow Fever.

Institute of Preventive Medicine director and food safety joint controller N. Poornachandra Rao said, “We are making efforts in Delhi and hope we get this soon.”

Meanwhile, as parts of AP are witnessing a series of health problems like diarrhoea, there is a need for well equipped labs to carry out tests. Though AP has district public health labs, water quality monitoring labs and regional public health labs and others, these face shortage of manpower and medical equipment.

Sources say that the11 labs with 150 sanctioned posts of analysts etc have only 40 personnel now. A plea has been made to the state government to fill up all vacancies and provide equipment to help these carry out tests.