More than four years after it was shut down for failing to comply with the Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) standards, the government’s vaccine manufacturing unit-Pasteur Institute of India (PII), Coonoor, is all set to roll out its first batch of vaccine doses for Dipetheria Pertussis Tetanus (DPT) from Tuesday.
The Public Sector Unit (PSU) will supply about 15 lakh of DPT doses for the country’s Universal Immunisation Progr-amme (UIP). The institute proposes to release about 30 million doses of DPT for the year 2012-2013. “This will be the first time after four years that the PSU will start rolling our vaccines again,” said a senior official in the health ministry.
The vaccines have been validated and underwent a quality control testing CDL Kasauli in March 2012.
The manufacturing process had started in 2010 after Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad ordered the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) to partially revoke the suspension of licence of the PSU in order to enable domestic use of the vaccines.
PII and two other PSUs— Central Research Institute (CRI), Kasauli and Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) Vaccine Laboratory, Guindy were closed down in 2008 by the then Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss on the grounds that they were not GMP compliant.

source: http://www.DeccanChronicle.com / Home> Channels> NATION> North / by Correspondent / New Delhi / June 26th, 2012