Norms flouted at King Institute: report

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, APRIL 6. An inspection report on the functioning of the King Institute of Preventive Medicine, Chennai, reveals shocking state of affairs at the premier institution where 200- odd horses died during 1999 and 2000.

Though the century-year old institute run by the Tamil Nadu Government also specialises in production of vaccines and sera, including anti-rabies, anti-snake venom serum, tetanus toxoid, cholera and typhoid vaccines, it does not have a documented scientific protocol for vaccine production. Neither does it have an ethical code of animal experimentation and uses ad-hoc and arbitrary methods of production.

In its inspection report submitted to Ms. Maneka Gandhi, chairperson of the Committee for the Purpose of Control and Supervision of Experiments on Animals (CPCSEA), a team of inspectors have said non-adherence to any scientific protocol for production of anti-snake venom serum (ASVS) and sheer neglect and apathy at the institute were responsible for the death of the horses.

The experts said the institute does not have the basic requirement of a sterile room for collection of blood for production of anti-snake venom. What is worse is that there is no weighing scale at the institute since 1980, though recording the weight of the horse is mandatory before bleeding.

``Many of the horses were suffering from severe cases of hoof rot which were bleeding and infected with maggots. This condition was not being attended to,'' the experts said adding that veterinary attention to sick animals was not provided and no health or medical recorded were being maintained.

Shockingly, the institute was not aware of the WHO norms of ASVS production or the state-of-the-art technology in ASVS production. The norms lay down that only healthy equines in the age group of 5 to 8 years are to be used for ASVS production and only 5 to 8 litres of blood or 1 per cent of the body weight, whichever is less, is to be taken in a month.

Also, healthy horses should have a haemoglobin content of 14 to 18 per cent and never less than 11 per cent. The packed cell volume should not be less than 35 to 40 per cent.

The institute was not adhering to the norms as it was not even aware of them. Only rarely were horses purchased. Here also, in 90 per cent of the cases, old retired horses from the Army, which were 18 years and above, were accepted as ``gifts''.

Further, blind, lame, handicapped anaemic and sick horses were regularly and constantly injected with venom and bled. There were instances when upto 13 litres of blood was extracted from an animal within a month, it was revealed.

The report also points out that the institute bled and injected venom in a pregnant mare in the last stages of her gestation. The malnourished deformed foal was born in the institute. The mare died within two months of delivery of the foal. Apparently, the veterinarian did not realise that the horse was pregnant.

Also, if a horse was observed to be very sick or suffering, it was bled to death. In other instances, they succumbed to chronic toxicity of the venom which leads to blindness and degeneration of the liver/kidney. Euthanasia was never practiced at the institute.

It has also been observed that the institute still practices the obsolete and WHO-banned method of anti-rabies vaccine production from sheep brain. In this method, the brain of a sheep is drilled while it is conscious and live virus injected. The sheep then progressively develops paralysis over a period of 7-14 days at the end of which it is decapitated and the brain harvested. This method is unscientific, dangerous to the recipient and inhuman.

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