TB
Health experts will in the coming weeks converge in Mayuge and Iganga districts for a clinical trial, to test the world’s first experimental tuberculosis vaccine in nearly a century, allAfrica.com reported Dec. 9.
According to Dr. Anne Wajja, director of the TB vaccine project in Uganda, this could be a turning point.
“New TB drugs and vaccines will be important, they will change the lives of ordinary people,” said Wajja, who spoke at a conference on lung health Dec. 6 in Mexico.
The conference attracted researchers to discuss experimental drugs and vaccines to fight TB, which killed 1.8 million people in 2008, or one person every 20 seconds.
Uganda is ranked 16 on the list of the 22 high-burden TB countries worldwide. In 2007, the country had more than 102,000 new TB cases, with an incidence rate of about 330 per 100,000 people.
According to Wajja, the studies in the two districts will focus on the rate of TB in both babies and adults. Approximately 2,500 children younger than 2 years old and 7,000 adults have been selected for the studies and those who will test negative for the disease will enroll for vaccine trials.
Only one vaccine exists to prevent TB, despite being one of the oldest diseases known. The Bacille Calmette-Guerin vaccine was developed around 1920.
Recent studies have shown that the BCG can only treat the disease in children and not in adults. But World Health Organization guidelines state that it is not supposed to be given to children infected with HIV/AIDS.
There are now nine experimental vaccines in clinical trials and experts in the field say a better vaccine could be in use by 2016.
