Down To Earth filed an RTI application to find out the reason of vaccine shortage in India. The response revealed how a plan to promote private vaccine makers boomeranged. The health ministry was forced to get vaccines illegally from the very public sector manufacturers it suspended last year Shuvam Kumar lay on an iron cot in the tetanus ward of the Nalanda Medical College and Hospital

cyrus s poonawalla, chairperson and managing director of Serum Institute of India Ltd, a private vaccine manufacturer, says the vaccine shortage is a mess the government created. Edited excerpts: On self-sufficiency: Except for polio vaccine, we can provide all vaccines required for the Universal Immunization Programme. Whatever orders were placed have been completed on time. On

Strengthen public sector The lack of foresight shown by former health minister Anbumani Ramadoss in shutting the public sector without first ensuring alternatives and lack of transparency have put a generation of children at risk. Clearly, the private sector

Global health funding has increased in recent years. This has been accompanied by a proliferation in the number of global health actors and initiatives. This paper describes the state of global heath finance, taking into account government and private sources of finance, and raises and discusses a number of policy issues related to global health governance. A schematic describing the different actors and three global health finance functions is used to organize the data presented, most of which are secondary data from the published literature and annual reports of relevant actors.