Malaysia To Produce Own Vaccine In Three Years' Time

PUTRAJAYA, May 24 (Bernama) -- Malaysia plans to set up its own vaccine production centre in three years' time, Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek said.
"Currently, Malaysia is dependent on the import of vaccine, and that is why we are trying to develop our own vaccine production," he said.
"It will cost about RM800 million to RM1 billion to set up a vaccine production centre, including the hi-tech and research centre. We want to do a vaccine centre together with a research centre," he told reporters after launching the Kuala Lumpur OIC (Organisation of the Islamic Conference) Health Ministerial Conference 2007 web page here Thursday.
Dr Chua said Malaysia used to produce vaccine but somehow or rather it was closed down.
"That was many years ago and now we better restart all over again. We hope in three years time, (if) God is willing," he said.
The minister said the government expenditure on vaccines was between RM80 million to RM100 million annually.
He said it appeared that Malaysia imported the vaccines from the western countries.
This was because all these vaccines needed to have some pre-qualification requirement stipulated by the World health Organisation (WHO) and could not be simply purchased from anywhere.
When asked on the status of immunization programme in Malaysia, Dr Chua said: "It is the same as those in advanced countries. If you talk about basic immunization, I would say we have achieved nearly 100 percent."
"In Malaysia, we are lucky in the sense that we make it compulsory because firstly, there is political commitment and secondly, we have excellent physical health facilities which enable the people easy access," he said.
In the peninsula, he said 90 percent of the people were living within five kilometres from the health facilities.
To date there are 130 hospitals and 4,000 clinics including the mobile ones.
"So a simple programme like this needs commitment and accessibility to the health facilities," he said.
Dr Chua pointed out that because of the good immunization program in the country, Malaysia was able to bring down its mortality rate among children.
"The infant mortality rate when we achieved independence was 75 per 1,000 children. Today, we have reduced it to 5.1 per 1,000 children.
"The mortality rate of children less than five years old used to be 57 per 1,000, (but) today it has been reduced to 8.8 per 1,000," he said adding that these figures were comparable to a lot of the developed countries' figures.