Local dengue vaccine trial-tested:

Health Ministry cautious

by Carol Aloysius

Fogging against dengue - asianscientist.com

The Health Ministry wants a hundred percent assurance of the efficacy of the dengue vaccine from manufacturers before introducing it in Sri Lanka's immunisation program.

"Even if it is registered, we don't want to take a chance. If there is a single failure as in the case of the Rubella vaccine sometime ago, our whole immunization program will collapse," Senior Consultant, National Dengue Control Unit, Dr Preshila Samaraweera told the Sunday Observer.

The WHO recently endorsed a dengue vaccine - Dengvaxia, developed by a team of researchers in France, considered to be the world's first vaccine against the dengue virus.

Although the number of dengue cases has dropped considerably, compared to previous years, the Epidemiology Unit reported that in the first four months of this year alone there were 14,204 suspected dengue cases islandwide, with approximately 52.65% from the Western Province, the highest number reported was in the fourth week of March 2016.

According to the latest statistics, Colombo had 275 cases with the Municipal Council area reporting 76 and other areas in Colombo 199.

The WHO recommended vaccine, comes in the wake of two other vaccines currently being manufactured in Japan and by medical drug manufacturing giant Glaxo Symthe Kline. According to WHO sources, Dengvaxia has already been licensed in Mexico, Brazil, El Salvador and the Philippines. WHO has recommended other developing nations to adopt it in the coming months.

Dr Samaraweera said, " This vaccine is in the post-marketing stage and the countries that have licensed it have already trial-tested it.

Trial-testing a new vaccine involves several time consuming procedures as the reaction of all age groups to it has to be tested. The Health Ministry will take a technical decision considering all these factors when it introduces the vaccine. Our concern is that people don't lose confidence in our immunisation program. It could happen with just one failure", she said.