Next month, hundreds of African infants will get an experimental vaccine against malaria in a medical trial that could foster a multibillion-dollar collaboration of science, philanthropy and market savvy, reports The Asian Wall Street Journal.
The malaria vaccine about to be tested, Mosquirix, developed by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), has been under development for two decades.
In June 1999, the Bill Gates foundation gave an initial 50 million US dollar, later raised to 150 million dollar, to launch the Malaria Vaccine Initiative in Seattle, Washington, which in turn gave 10 million dollar to GSK.
That money funded clinics, training and salaries for the largest such malaria-vaccine study in Africa to date: a controlled clinical trial in more than 2.000 Mozambique toddlers aged 1 to 4 that started in April 2003.
In Manhica, Mozambique, mothers lined up with their toddlers to receive either the malaria vaccine or a “control” vaccine, such as one for hepatitis. The malaria vaccine group had 30 percent fewer first attacks, 58 percent fewer deadly cases.
Next month, GSK tests advance to the ultimate target group: 10-week-old infants. In Mozambique and Tanzania, 600 to 800 infants will get malaria vaccine with their routine shots.
If Mosquirix protects them, tests will expand to more countries. If these succeed, GSK says Mosquirix could be available in five years. Richard Feachem, executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, says the vaccine would produce at best 50 to 60 percent efficacy and may be closer to 10 years away.
Under two new funding strategies championed by Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates and Britains finance minister, Gordon Brown, rich nations and their private-sector partners for the first time would jointly guarantee the provision of vaccines against the worst scourges afflicting the developing world.
In one approach, donor governments would guarantee that a company that produced a cutting-edge vaccine for poor countries would receive market-rate prices long enough to recoup development costs. This mechanism, proposed earlier this month, is called an advance-purchase contract.
The other strategy consists of rich countries, for the first time, floating government bonds geared specifically to supplying poor countries with available vaccines now and new vaccines later.
Through a proposed International Finance Facility (IFF) for Immunization, the billions of dollars expected to be raised would greatly expand the distribution of existing life-saving vaccines for diseases like polio and hepatitis (leverbetændelse), and ensure that newer vaccines reach those who need them.
Kilde: www.worldbank.org
