The Infectious Diseases Hospital at Mohakhali in the capital Dhaka, the top public hospital in Bangladesh for the treatment of infectious diseases, has run out of the anti-rabies vaccine, causing sufferings to the patients, who rush to the health facility from districts with animal bites after not getting treatment at the local level.
IDH superintendent and senior consultant Ariful Basher said that their anti-rabies vaccine stock exhausted on Friday as the agency concerned did not supply the essential vaccine yet.
He further disclosed that the hospital had run out of immunoglobulins, also known as antibodies and crucial for fighting off infections, a month ago while the anti-rabies vaccine was totally finished on Friday.
On Friday, the hospital authority hanged a notice on the hospital gate notifying the unavailability of the vaccine.
However, several hundred people unknowingly came to the hospital and went back home without receiving the vaccine in the past two days.
The Communicable Disease Control wing of the Directorate General of Health Services once used to supply the vaccine to the hospital after purchasing them on the market.
However, the responsibility to supply the vaccine was shifted to the Central Medical Store Depot, a Bangladesh government agency under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, in June 2024, said DGHS line director for CDC Halimur Rashid.
He said that they had not purchased any vaccine for the IDH ever since. The vaccine is administrated to human body if suspected of receiving animal bite that can spread rabies.
The IDH is a public hospital known for treating patients with animal bites like dog or cat bites.
The Infectious Disease Hospital authority said that they used to receive between 400 and 500 suspected patients in the hospital with animal bites, mostly dog bites, every day.
The government supplies free vaccine for patients to the IDH facility as well as to district and some upazila hospitals.
Civil surgeons of different districts confirmed that their hospitals at district headquarters were unable to give the free vaccine to the patients who went to the hospitals as most of the hospitals had been without the anti-rabies vaccine for about a month. Many districts even did not get the vaccine in the past three months.
Central Medical Store Depot deputy director KM Humayoun Kabir said that they had already signed a contract to buy 2,95,000 doses of the rabies vaccine from Incepta. The company on Thursday, meanwhile, supplied 80,000 doses of the vaccine to the contractor for supplying those to the CMSD.
鈥楢fter a mandatory survey on the vaccine, I hope the Infectious Disease Hospital will get the jabs by Sunday [today],鈥� he said without answering why they were so late in supplying the lifesaving vaccine.
Rabies is a deadly viral disease with 100 per cent death rate, if not treated with the vaccine, but is also a 100 per cent vaccine-preventable zoonotic disease as well.
Every year, an estimated 3-4 lakhs of people in Bangladesh are bitten by dogs and other animals.
One of the world鈥檚 highest-impact academic journals, The Lancet, reported in 2024 that rabies had high public health consequences for Bangladesh.
Rabies is responsible for an estimated 59,000 human deaths every year across the world. Bangladesh ranks third among the rabies-endemic countries in the world in terms of human rabies deaths.
In total, 879 cases of human rabies were reported in Bangladesh between 2011 and 2023, with an average of 5.63 cases recorded monthly.
However, Bangladesh in 2015 committed zero rabies deaths by 2030.
To meet the target, Bangladesh launched the National Rabies Elimination Programme in 2011 to eliminate dog-mediated human rabies through the One Health approach.
Bangladesh under the programme, has been immunizing dogs while it continued post-bite treatment as well.
Bangladesh Medical University former vice-chancellor and virologist Nazrul Islam said that vaccinating dog-bite victims is very important to save their lives.
As soon as possible, animal-bite patients should be vaccinated to save their lives, he added.
鈥楾hat a specialised hospital for rabies treatment is running without rabies vaccine cannot be imagined,鈥� he said.
Rabies is a viral zoonotic disease that leads to severe inflammation of the brain and the spinal cord.
