Pandemic Revives Debate over Fallen Croatian Vaccine Giant

But while Croatian media have speculated that the IMZ could play an even greater role in the fight against the pandemic, Jagarinec says it is not so simple.

The Institute, which churned out bacterial and viral vaccines, lost its production license in 2013 and its premises have fallen into disrepair.

But, Jagarinec said, "The knowledge exists, the recipe exists. The fact that we do not have adequate premises does not mean we cannot produce."

Local vaccine production a big advantage

Illustration. Photo: EPA-EFE/PIETER STAM DE JONG.

With a history dating back to 1893, the IMZ began developing blood derivatives exclusively from blood plasma collected in Croatia more than half a century ago. It was behind the Edmonston-Zagreb vaccine strain against measles in the 1960s and qualified as a supplier of the vaccine for the United Nations in the 1980s, leading to the vaccine's use around the world.

But like a host of other publicly-owned Yugoslav-era manufacturers, the Institute entered a downward spiral with the collapse of the socialist federation in the early 1990s and the ensuing process of privatisation in newly-independent Croatia.

As in other ex-Yugoslav republics, the privatisation process in Croatia has long been mired in controversy and allegations of manipulation.

In the healthcare sector there was "a strange combination of clumsiness, [government] lack of interest and the interference of private interests at the level of decision-making and planning," said Ana Vracar of the Organisation for Workers' Initiative and Democratisation NGO, BRID.

Vracar said she believed that, like other companies slated for privatisation, the IMZ's "production capacities were reduced to zero with the idea of ...