The dengue vaccine the Health Ministry promised during this year’s outbreak has still not been brought into Sri Lanka, with specialist Dr. Chamal Sanjeewa blaming delays in National Medicines Regulatory Authority approval for its importation.
Dr. Sanjeewa, who heads the Doctors’ Trade Union Alliance for Medical and Civil Rights, said the Ministry announced plans to introduce a dengue vaccine to protect the public during the recent major outbreak, but the steps needed to bring it into the country have not been completed, the Daily Mirror reported on Wednesday evening.
He said suppliers had been seeking NMRA approval to import the vaccine for years, and urged the authority to expedite the process so the vaccine is available through both public and private healthcare before the next outbreak.
The cost he quotes is a consequence of a policy already announced
Dr. Sanjeewa put the price at approximately Rs. 50,000 per dose — meaning the two doses required would cost more than Rs. 100,000 through the private sector.
That private-sector route is not incidental. When the review began, Health Minister Dr. Nalinda Jayatissa said on 31 July that the government planned to allow the private sector to purchase the vaccine first once it was approved. The six-figure private cost Dr. Sanjeewa is objecting to is what that sequencing produces. Wednesday’s filing does not make the connection.
The archive names the vaccine the filing does not
The Daily Mirror does not say which vaccine is involved. Our own reporting does.
The NMRA appointed an expert committee on 21 July to assess whether Qdenga, made by Takeda, should be registered for use in Sri Lanka — days after India’s drug regulator approved the same shot. The committee is chaired by consultant physician Dr. Ananda Wijewickrama, who also chairs the NMRA.
Qdenga is given as two subcutaneous doses, the second three months after the first, for people aged 4 to 60. The two-dose regimen Dr. Sanjeewa describes matches it. The filing does not name the product, so this is stated as consistent rather than confirmed.
On that timeline, the expert review has been running for roughly twelve weeks without an import.
He has made this complaint before, and quantified it
This is not a new objection. On 3 August, Dr. Sanjeewa told reporters that Sri Lanka’s drug regulatory system had “collapsed”, naming a nearly two-year delay in approving the Qdenga dengue vaccine specifically, and calling for an investigation into whether negligence was involved.
That August figure is what Wednesday’s vaguer “for years” refers to. It also places the current wait at roughly two years and three months since the application.
The same union has repeatedly raised NMRA handling of imports — including 190,000 G-CSF cancer injections said to have cleared Customs without meeting labelling and quality requirements in September.
The outbreak behind the promise
Sri Lanka passed 100,000 dengue cases this year during the third week of September, with 100,127 infections and 77 deaths recorded by 27 September. July was the peak month at 29,964 cases; the monthly curve has since fallen sharply.
Dr. Sanjeewa’s argument is framed around the next outbreak rather than this one.
Sourcing and open questions
This report rests on a single verified newsroom. A sweep of same-day output from Hiru News and NewsFirst found no corresponding filing; the archive material above is this newsroom’s own earlier reporting, not additional sourcing for Wednesday’s statement.
The Daily Mirror describes Dr. Sanjeewa as President of the alliance; our earlier reporting has consistently called him its chairman. No response from the NMRA or the Health Ministry is reported, no current status of the expert committee’s review is given, and no explanation is offered for why approval has not followed. Whether any supplier application is formally pending, and at what stage, is not stated.
