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New Weapons Against Ancient Foes:
New Generation Vaccines Will Battle Diseases that Kill Millions
Experts Meeting in New Delhi Focus on Accelerating Scientific Innovations,
Urge Financing for New and Underused Vaccines against Diseases
That Kill Two Million Children Each Year in Developing Countries
8 December - NEW DELHI - Disease experts from
around the world are gathering this week in New Delhi to consider the
projected impact of innovations in vaccine science that are expected to
fuel aggressive efforts aimed at preventing millions of needless deaths
among children in the world’s poorest nations.
In India for the 3rd Global Alliance for
Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) Partners’ Meeting, experts are
reporting on advances involving several new generation vaccines that
target diseases such as rotavirus, Haemophilus influenzae type
B (Hib) disease, pneumococcal disease, and Japanese
encephalitis—killers of approximately two million children every year.
According to experts at the GAVI meeting, the lack of
demand for new and under-utilized vaccines is influenced by low
awareness of disease burden among policymakers and the relatively high
cost of new vaccines when compared to other routine immunizations. To
increase local support, health initiatives among GAVI Alliance partners
are collaborating with national governments to conduct disease
surveillance and report on the burden of disease in order to accelerate
the introduction of new generation vaccines in developing countries.
“Even when a vaccine is available, problems related to
costs, availability, and awareness of the burden of the disease can
delay adoption for years or decades,” said Dr. Julian Lob-Levyt,
Executive Secretary of the GAVI Alliance. “GAVI and its partners can
help address these questions by developing strategies for
manufacturing, distributing, and administering vaccines, and by
gathering surveillance data that shows decision makers more precisely
the extent to which a particular disease affects the population.”
Several initiatives are making great strides in helping
to introduce new and under-utilized vaccines in an effort to shorten
the time it takes for vaccines to make it from the laboratory to the
people they are most likely to benefit. The initiatives described
below, all of which are represented at the GAVI Partners’ Meeting in
New Delhi, are working to build national and international support for
the vaccines.
Haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib) Disease
The Hib Initiative, which is being launched in New Delhi this week, is
the newest of a group of GAVI-funded health initiatives designed to
provide focus for informed decision-making regarding use of Hib
vaccine. Hib vaccination has been used in industrialized nations for 15
years but is still under-utilized in the developing world. This is
despite evidence of its great success in developing countries, such as
The Gambia, in West Africa, where Hib meningitis and severe pneumonia
in young children have virtually been eliminated following
implementation of routine infant vaccination against Hib. Spread by
droplets through coughs and sneezing, often in overcrowded living
conditions, Hib is estimated to cause 3 million cases of serious
illness (mainly pneumonia and meningitis) in children under 5 years of
age each year and about 400,000 deaths, the vast majority of them in
developing countries.
Pneumococcal Pneumonia and Meningitis Based at
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,
PneumoADIP’s mission is to improve child survival and health by
accelerating the evaluation of, and access to, new life-saving
pneumococcal vaccines for the world’s poorest children. Pneumococcal
disease is the leading vaccine-preventable killer of children under 5 –
more than 800,000 children die every year from pneumococcal meningitis
and pneumonia, according to WHO estimates, and the majority of theses
deaths are in the developing world. A vaccine that targets the
bacterium responsible for pneumococcal disease – Streptococcus
pneumoniae, or pneumococcus – is already in routine use in the United
States and elsewhere. Clinical trials conducted in South Africa and The
Gambia have shown that a 9-valent vaccine (containing additional
serotypes commonly responsible for invasive disease in Africa) is
extremely effective in preventing pneumococcal disease in these
vulnerable populations. If used routinely, a pneumococcal conjugate
vaccine could prevent hundreds of thousands of child deaths each year
and contribute to achieving the United Nations’ Millennium Development
Goal to decrease childhood deaths by two-thirds by 2015.
Rotavirus Seattle-based nongovernmental
organization PATH is working to accelerate the introduction of new
vaccines to fight rotavirus, a severe diarrheal disease that each year
kills 500,000 children, almost all living in poor countries. A vaccine
against rotavirus is the most promising method for preventing the
disease and is especially needed in developing countries, where prompt
medical care is often out of reach. PATH’s Rotavirus Vaccine Program
aims to decrease the typical 10 to 15 years it takes to introduce a
vaccine in developing countries to less than 5 years. By demonstrating
to governments the impact of rotavirus and the promise of a vaccine,
PATH helps to ensure demand and works with manufacturers to establish a
consistent supply of rotavirus vaccine to meet that demand.
Japanese Encephalitis Efforts also are underway
at PATH, with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to
improve control of Japanese encephalitis (JE) through immunization.
Over the last 60 years, JE has killed 3 million children and caused
long-term disability in millions more. PATH’s JE Project is
accelerating wider availability of one promising JE vaccine candidate
and analyzing prospects for others. The project is supporting efforts
to add JE vaccine to the roster of other vaccines given to infants in
endemic areas of Asia and the Pacific, with the ultimate aim of
eliminating clinical JE.
In addition to advances in new vaccines, experts in New
Delhi also will consider other important issues that are critical to
the success of the global immunization effort, such as sustainable
financing, support for health systems and the role of civil society.
# # #
The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (now
the GAVI Alliance) was launched in 2000 to increase immunization rates
and reverse widening global disparities in access to vaccines.
Governments in industrialized and developing countries, UNICEF, WHO,
the World Bank, non-governmental organizations, foundations, vaccine
manufacturers, and public health and research institutions work
together as partners in the Alliance, to achieve common immunization
goals, in the recognition that only through a strong and united effort
can much higher levels of support for global immunization be generated.
Funds channeled through GAVI’s financing arm, The GAVI Fund (formerly
The Vaccine Fund), are used to help strengthen health and immunization
services, accelerate access to selected vaccines and new vaccine
technologies - especially vaccines that are new or under-used - and
improve injection safety. In addition to substantial funding from the
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The Vaccine Fund has been financed
by ten governments to date—Canada, Denmark, France, Ireland,
Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and
the United States– as well as the European Union and private
contributors. For more information, please contact Nicole King, tel: +1
202 478 1041;
nking@vaccinefund.org.
PATH (
www.path.org)
is an international, nonprofit organization that creates sustainable,
culturally relevant solutions that enable communities worldwide to
break longstanding cycles of poor health. More information on PATH’s
vaccine initiatives is available by contacting Laura Cooley, tel: +1
206 285 3500; email:
lcooley@path.org.
The Hib Initiative (
www.hibaction.org)
provides coordination and strategic focus in the fight to reduce
childhood death and life-long disability from Hib meningitis and
pneumonia. More information on the Hib Initiative is available by
contacting Lois Privor-Dumm, tel: +1 410 502 4292; mobile: +1 484 354
8054; email:
lprivord@jhsph.edu.
The Pneumococcal Vaccines Accelerated Development and Introduction Plan, or PneumoADIP (
www.preventpneumo.org),
works to shorten the time between the use of a new vaccine in
industrialized
countries and its introduction in developing countries. More
information on the PneumoADIP is available by contacting Hans Kvist,
tel: +1 443 287 8302; email:
hkvist@jhsph.edu.
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