NEW DELHI, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- An Indian vaccine research institute has stopped manufacturing the critical Japanese Encephalitis (JE) vaccines as it has failed to upgrade its laboratory to world standards, according to Indo-Asian News Service Thursday.

    The Central Research Institute (CRI) at Kasauli, about 80 km from Shimla, the capital of India's north Himachal Pradesh, supplies the JE vaccine to at least nine states of India. But the CRI has failed to upgrade its laboratory according to World Health Organization (WHO) norms, the report said.

    Official sources said since the production of the JE vaccine is more expensive than importing vaccines, Indian health ministry isn't keen to produce the vaccine at the CRI.

    Last year, the health ministry imported a record 13.5 million doses of JE vaccines worth over Rs.128 million (almost 3.2 million U.S. dollars).

    JE is a mosquito borne virus, which affects the human central nervous system. In 2005, the outbreak of JE took more than a thousand lives in a state in northern India.