Med penge fra Bill Gates store fond er forskerne nået så langt, at de er begyndt at teste vaccinen i Indien og USA mod klodens næstværste parasit-sygdom efter malaria – sort feber.
BANGKOK, 9 May 2012 (IRIN): A vaccine against one of the most neglected yet fatal tropical diseases is being tested for the first time in a clinical trial in India and the US.
After malaria, leishmaniasis (sort feber) is the second largest parasitic killer, and the visceral (ondartede) form is the most deadly – se også http://patienthaandbogen.dk/infektioner/sygdomme/leishmaniasis-1748.html
“Visceral leishmaniasis (VL) kills 50.000 persons per year, 70 percent of them children. It can be treated but the costs are too high… at hundreds of US dollars per person,” said Dr Franco Piazza at the Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI).
IDRI is a US-based NGO that developed the vaccine with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
VL, also called kala-azar or black fever, infects an estimated half million persons or more annually. It is found most commonly in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Brazil and Sudan.
The leishmaniasis group of diseases is transmitted by infected sand flies, which carry a parasite that attacks the liver, spleen (milt) and bone marrow (knoglemarv). Left untreated, VL is almost always fatal (dødelig), said Philippe Desjeux, a specialist in the infection at the San Francisco-based non-profit OneWorld Health.
OneWorld Health is leading the US-funded part of the clinical trial testing IDRI’s vaccine. The other part of trial is led by Gennova Pharmaceuticals – a Pune-based Indian company to which IDRI has transferred its technology – in collaboration with the Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi.
“We have just opened a formulation centre (research and production facility) for vaccines against neglected diseases in Pune”, said Sanjay Singh, the chief executive officer of Gennova.
“If the vaccine passes all the tests, producing it in India will make it affordable to all the people who are affected by VL,” added he.
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http://www.irinnews.org/Report/95431/HEALTH-Leishmaniasis-vaccine-trial-underway
Begynd fra: “The infection is one of more than a dozen….”
