Even as Nepal’s vaccine procurement woes continue amidst a surge in coronavirus cases, it has now come to light that the health ministry has been sitting on a proposal sent by the Nepali embassy in Beijing on procuring a Chinese vaccine.

The Nepal government has been unable to give any update on acquiring enough jabs to inoculate 72 per cent of the nation’s 30 million population as also on arranging the second jabs for the 1.3 million people who have taken the first shots of Covishield, the AstraZeneca type vaccine manufactured by the Serum Institute of India, The Kathmandu Post reported.

Meanwhile, the Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine producer, has made a public statement that it would be able to export the vaccines only by yearend, after possibly meeting India's domestic requirements.

Amid this, officials at Nepal’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Health Ministry, however, pointed fingers at each other for not doing enough to acquire vaccines on time.

An official at the foreign ministry said the health ministry has held up for over one week a proposal sent by the Nepali embassy in Beijing on procuring Sinopharm’s BBIBP-CorV.

“The Nepali embassy in Beijing made a correspondence to the Ministry of Health through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs about the details regarding the vaccine, including the price, logistical issues and estimated time of consignment arrival to Nepal,” the Kathmandu Post quoted an unnamed joint secretary at the foreign ministry as saying.

“But we have not received any feedback and response from the health ministry.”

According to the official, the correspondence followed a visit about two weeks ago to the headquarters of Sinopharm by Mahendra Bahadur Pandey, Nepal’s ambassador to China, and Sushil Kumar Lamsal, the deputy chief of mission.

The Post’s repeated attempts to reach out to Lamsal for comments on the current vaccine procurement status went unanswered.

The Nepali embassy took the initiative as per a request by Nepal to the Chinese government a little over a month ago, seeking two million doses of BBIBP-CorV developed by Sinopharm, according to the Foreign Ministry official.

Dr Roshan Pokhrel, chief specialist at the Health Ministry, however, said the ministry had asked the Foreign Ministry to initiate a process to procure vaccines whenever and from wherever they can be procured.

“The Health Ministry is ready to procure vaccines under a government-to government-model and ready to pay the international market price,” Pokhrel told the Post. “The Health Ministry has also asked the Foreign Ministry to help negotiate directly with the manufacturers.”

Questions, however, remain if both the ministries were ready to work in tandem, what exactly caused the delay.

In a brief telephone interview with the Post, Foreign Minister Pradeep Gyawali blamed bureaucratic issues for failing to procure vaccines from China.

“Some of the provisions in the Public Procurement Act also caused the delay in taking decisions,” said Gyawali. “We need to remove obstacles in our procurement law also, as existing provisions and bureaucratic framework make it difficult to import emergency items during an emergency.”

Gyawali hoped that the modalities for procurement would be finalised by the end of May.

(SAM)