BANGKOK, 18 April 2011 (IRIN): Decades in the making, the dengue vaccine’s arrival is now in sight, but demand from the 2,5 billion people at risk of contracting (pådrage sig) this mosquito-borne disease will be much greater than the initial supply, health experts warn.
– The vaccine is just around the corner, but the corner is four years from now. It is promising, but not an answer to all of our prayers, Luiz Jacintho da Silva, director of the South Korea-based International Vaccine Institute (IVI), an organization strategizing vaccine distribution, told IRIN.
While dengue vaccine development has been widespread among research institutions and pharmaceutical companies, Sanofi Pasteur, the largest vaccine developer in the world, is years ahead of the rest. If all goes well in the ongoing clinical trials, experts say immunizing the public may begin as soon as 2015.
But the estimated 300 to 400 million people who will want the vaccine is too much for just one manufacturer.
– Unless someone pops up with something fantastic, they will be the sole producer for a few years. Capacity will be limited and we will not be able to reach everyone, Da Silva said.
Forty years have gone into developing a dengue vaccine – three to four times longer than it took to create similar vaccines for other mosquito-borne illnesses such as Japanese encephalitis and yellow fever, said Steve Whitehead, a researcher with the Laboratory of Infectious Diseases, part of the US National Institutes of Health.
To be effective, four different dengue diseases had to be rolled into one vaccine, which made the process that much more complicated.
– It is clearly a difficult journey, said Joachim Hombach, acting head of the initiative of vaccine research for the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva.
Urban risk
Læs videre på http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportID=92498
Se også om dengue feber i MSFs medicinske leksikon på
http://www.msf.dk/Nyheder/Medicinskleksikon/Denguefeber/?gclid=CJPovqvvpqgCFYSGDgodqgl3HA
og på http://www.ssi.dk/Service/Sygdomsleksikon/D/Dengue-feber.aspx
