Ecobreves – BRAZIL: Dengue Vaccine by 2010?

By IPS Correspondents and - - Reprint | | Print |

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 9 2008 (IPS) - A vaccine that could be effective against four strains of dengue will be available in Brazil in 2010, announced the Butantan Institute, a government research center in Sao Paulo state. “The timeline is optimistic, but with good possibilities,” Butantan president Isaías Raw told Tierramérica. Resources are urgently needed to build the factory and “produce small quantities in order to initiate clinical trials,” he added.

The vaccine, whose patent was ceded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, will be tested in Brazil and another country, probably in the Caribbean.

The goal is to produce tens of millions of low-coast vaccine doses per year so the government can carry out a mass inoculation, Raw said in presenting the initiative.

The Institute “produces 82 percent of the national human vaccines for free distribution and at much lower costs than commercial vaccines,” he added.