Pollution drive to affect syringe manufacturing badly: HMD seeks PM’s intervention

New Delhi: Hindustan Syringes and Medical Devices Limited (HMD), India’s largest syringes and needles manufacturing company, along with more than 228 large factories of Faridabad has been asked to shut down its factories ‘voluntarily’ as part of a pollution-control drive undertaken by authorities in the National Capital Region (NCR).

As per the company’s statistics, HMD alone contributes to over 66% of syringe supplies in India for curative healthcare and immunization.

Raising his concern, Mr. Rajiv Nath, Managing Director, HMD, who is also the Forum Coordinator of Association of Indian Medical Devices Industry (AIMeD) said “At this location HMD daily produces 1.5 crore needles and 80 lakh syringes. This has come to a halt now. As we can’t feed needles beyond two days buffer stock from Monday, other factories fed by the mother unit will be shut and daily 1.2 crore syringes will not be available nationally. The closure of needles and syringes manufacturing factories will create disruption in the supply chain which may impact healthcare delivery across the country in general and the Covid-19 vaccination programme in particular resulting in major shortage and other related issues.”

Mr Nath further added that most of HMD’s plants run on environmentally friendly piped natural gas (PNG). “We have captive PNG-based power generation. We do have standby Diesel Gensets, but are hardly used since we have PNG that’s far cheaper and pollution free. We are not a polluting industry and one of our plants just got the Gold Certification for Green Building for meeting sustainability standards.”

Mr. Rajiv Nath in a letter urged the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and other administrative ministries that syringes manufacturing facilities and other Covid Critical Medical Devices should be allowed to run under National Disaster Management Act to avoid National Health Care crisis in Curative Healthcare as well for much needed Covid-19 vaccination programme.

In a letter to Arvind Kumar Nautiyal, The Member Secretary, Commission for Air Quality Management, NCR & AA Mr. Nath informed that HMD is manufacturing Covid-19 critical medical devices i.e. syringes for Covid 19 vaccination and are running their operations with PNG of 4.3 mega watt since 2011. Mr. Nath requested Arvind Kumar to withdraw the order or make an exception looking at the critical nature of running their operation for the covid-19 vaccination in India as well as globally to avoid any big National healthcare crisis as over 2/3 of India depends up on HMD. Other countries are also counting on India to support global immunization / vaccination projects mainly for children.

“Syringes are already running short in India and globally & the government has also put in export restrictions. Our expectation was that the export restriction will be lifted by December end as peak demand ebbed post Diwali but orders like this will make the situation much worse,” he rued.

“We definitely understand and appreciate the concerns of the Govt. and we fully support the pollution drive. We assure the Govt. that we will not use our Diesel generator sets and have fully equipped our plants with renewable energy sources like PNG, Solar power energy and direct power access feeders. We are with the Govt. in every step to help combat the pollution level and encourage sustainability in our daily lifestyle.”

“If the Govt ensures steady power to Faridabad’s units why would there be a need for industry to spend 50% higher cost on PNG based power and 2.67 times on the Diesel Generated Power?,” Nath asked.

“No genset is allowed to run if it doesn’t meet emission and noise pollution norms or if chimney height is not as prescribed, in any case.”

“We on behalf of Indian syringe manufacturers and other critical care Medical Device makers appeal to the Govt. to amend the applicability of order and help us to save the Nation from a bigger looming healthcare crisis which will arise with closure of the syringe manufacturing factories and for other critical care like Peritoneal Dialysis used for Patients with failed kidneys,” added Mr. Nath.