India’s BCG vaccine, given to newborns against tuberculosis, has been made in Guindy since 1948, when the Government of India built a production laboratory on the campus of the King Institute with UNICEF help. The BCG Vaccine Laboratory’s milestone page records that date. The King Institute itself, a state public health institution, is older still: it grew out of a smallpox vaccine depot in the 1890s and was formally opened at Guindy in November 1905.
Most Chennai residents now know the site for the 1,000-bed Kalaignar Centenary hospital built inside its grounds. The institute is still working, testing water, food and outbreak samples for Tamil Nadu. Here is its story and what it does today.
From a lymph depot to a provincial lab
The institute is named after Walter Gawen King, an Indian Medical Service officer who joined in 1874 and later became Sanitary Commissioner of the Madras Presidency. A 1935 note in Nature says the Madras government set up a central depot for animal vaccine lymph against smallpox at his request. When the Government of India planned a network of laboratories in 1899, Madras’s became the third, after the Haffkine Institute in Bombay and the Pasteur Institute at Kasauli. It took King’s name in 1903, when the bacteriology buildings were finished.
A Madras Musings history fills in the rest: Samuel Rickard Christophers was appointed the first formal director in 1904, and Governor Lord Ampthill opened the institute in November 1905. During the First World War it shipped smallpox lymph to Allied troops in East Africa, and in 1919 it mass-produced an anti-influenza vaccine, a first in India.
By 1921-22 the institute’s annual report described five roles: vaccine lymph depot for the Presidency, maker of bacterial vaccines, clinical laboratory for Madras hospitals, the Presidency public health laboratory and a research lab.
The BCG laboratory next door
The BCG lab is a separate Government of India unit sharing the Guindy campus. Its milestones:
| Year | Milestone |
|---|---|
| 1948 | BCG production lab built at King Institute with UNICEF help |
| 1973 | Freeze-dried BCG production begins |
| 1993-2007 | BCG made for bladder cancer immunotherapy |
| 2016 | New GMP plant built at a sanctioned ₹64.70 crore |
| 1 Oct 2019 | Commercial manufacturing licence granted |
| 2020 | Supply to the Universal Immunization Programme starts |
The state Drugs Control Department’s vaccine list shows that the King Institute itself held a licence, valid 1997 to 2016, for diphtheria-typhoid and typhoid vaccines.
What the King Institute does now
The campus houses the State Water Analysis Laboratory of the Department of Public Health and Preventive Medicine. According to the department’s page, it checks physical, chemical, bacteriological and biological quality of water from approved supply schemes, and runs field investigations during outbreaks, floods, droughts and festivals.
Residents can also get water tested:
- Write a requisition letter stating the purpose, such as drinking, construction, swimming pool or food processing.
- Collect the sample for chemical tests in a clean white plastic can.
- Deliver it within 24 hours, or keep it on ice and deliver within 48 hours.
- Pay the fee for that purpose in cash or by demand draft to the Chief Water Analyst. Fees vary by purpose; confirm the current rate with the laboratory before you go.
The institute also tests outbreak samples. On 2 February 2020 the then health minister opened Tamil Nadu’s first novel coronavirus testing facility there, The News Minute reported.
The hospital on the campus
A state press release of 28 April 2023 said the 1,000-bed multi-super speciality hospital, built for ₹230 crore across about 51,429 sq m with a ground floor and six upper floors, stood within the King Institute complex. It is now the Kalaignar Centenary Super Speciality Hospital. The institute’s labs continue alongside it.
The science behind the smallpox lymph
Keeping vaccine lymph potent in Madras heat was the institute’s first real research problem. Animal lymph was first used successfully in Madras in 1880-81, the Nature note says, but more than ten years passed before a reliable method for the tropics was found. King himself compared lanoline and vaseline as preserving media in 1890. By the account in Madras Musings, the depot at its peak sent out more than two million doses a year, and the institute later offered cholera, typhoid and paratyphoid vaccines to the public at nominal cost. In 1921 a government order dropped the charge for manufacturing lymph, which let the institute publish its first combined annual report. Its staff also wrote standard texts, including Patton and Cragg’s 1913 textbook of medical entomology.
Quick answers
When did the King Institute open?
Its laboratory dates to the 1899 national scheme and took King’s name in 1903; it was formally opened at Guindy in November 1905.
Is BCG still made in Guindy?
Yes. The Government of India’s BCG Vaccine Laboratory began supplying the national programme from its new plant in 2020.
Can I get my well water tested there?
Yes, at the State Water Analysis Laboratory, with a requisition letter and the applicable fee.
Is it open to visitors?
No. It is a working laboratory; contact the department for official visits.
Information checked against official sources on 18 October 2026. Fees, dates and rules can change; confirm on the linked official pages before acting.
Sources
- Milestones of BCG (BCG Vaccine Laboratory, Guindy, Government of India)
- Water Analysis Laboratory, Department of Public Health and Preventive Medicine (Government of Tamil Nadu)
- Press release No. 789, 28 April 2023, Guindy multi-super speciality hospital (Government of Tamil Nadu)
- Vaccine manufacturers list (Drugs Control Department, Tamil Nadu)
- The pioneers of the King Institute (Madras Musings)
- Report on the working of the King Institute, 1921-22 (National Library of Scotland, India Papers)
- Colonel W. G. King obituary note (Nature, 1935)
- Tamil Nadu gets its first facility for testing coronavirus (The News Minute)
