Thanks Dr. Nagraj,
Actually there is a very interesting story behind how this all happened and I would like to share that with Technet readers because the entire expenditure of more than Rs. 40,000 ($1000) was born by none.
We started a low cost intradermal antirabies clinic on Oct 2, 2008 in Shimla and by now more than 6000 people, many of them poor have been given post- exosure prophylaxis with Anti rabies vaccine (ARV) saving lives and more than Rs. 1.2 crors ($277500 ) of poor patients.
We did this with a pooling technique, that is on first visit a patient is asked to bring one vial of ARV and we tell him that rest of shots he will get free; suppose there are four persons, all of them bring one vial of ARV, we share one vial among all of them and then keep rest of the three vials for use next time among all the four and so on till all the four shots are over.
Now the real surprise starts, we were able to save one drop of ARV in each vial and to our surprise we found that we have accumulated more than 100 vials of vaccine with one drop adding all these two years!
Now what to do with these vials lest they expire, we decided to vaccinate the rag pickers and garbage collectors of the Shimla city free of cost with these vials and that's how this idea of preventive vaccination was born and symbolises to bring in focus the deprived and those who are at constant risk of disease due to needle stick injuries and dog bites....
Thanks to all of you for all the encouragement....
Dr. Omesh Kumar Bharti
M.B.B.S.,D.H.M.,M.A.E.(Epidemiology)
Directorate of Health Safety and Regulation,
SHIMLA, Himachal Pradesh, India.
+91-9418120302
[
[email protected]]
[email protected][/email]