Ho Chi Minh City Pasteur Institute and France’s Sanofi Pasteur on Nov 3 announced the results of a dengue vaccination trial in five Asian countries, including Vietnam, with the efficacy reported in 56.5% of dengue-infected cases. The vaccination prevented 67% of the sufferers from being hospitalized and showed an 88.5% reduction of dengue hemorrhagic fever, the severe form of dengue, in line with the WHO criteria. The trial was undertaken on 10,275 children and teenagers aged 2 to 14 in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. In Vietnam, from September 2011, 2,336 children in the two Mekong Delta provinces of An Giang and Tien Giang got vaccinated. Tran Dac Phu, head of the Vietnamese Ministry of Health’s Preventive Health Department, said that a lack of dengue vaccine is a huge burden on not only Vietnam but many other countries. The dengue vaccine research program has been conducted by Sanofi Pasteur over the past 20 years, with the participation of Ho Chi Minh City’s Pasteur Institute. It will be implemented until November 2017. According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 50 million people annually contract dengue, of whom 500,000 require hospitalization and 25,000 die. Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccines division of Sanofi, provides more than one billion doses of vaccine each year, making it possible to immunize more than 500 million people across the globe. A world leader in the vaccine industry, Sanofi Pasteur offers the broadest range of vaccines protecting against 20 infectious diseases. (Tuoi Tre – Youth Nov 4, Thanh Nien – Young People Nov 3)
