Grants of $10 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will help develop and produce a powerful new polio vaccine to help stop the spread of the crippling disease by year-end, U.N. agencies said on Thursday.
The new vaccine, expected to be available in May, will be used initially in Egypt, where the poliovirus strain “type 1” remains endemic, the World Health Organization and the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said in a joint statement.
“Epidemiologists believe the new vaccine could help to bring a swift end to polio through mass immunization campaigns across areas where virus types 2 and 3 have already been eliminated,” the statement said.
The vaccine — hoped to be more efficient at boosting immunity against type one than the current trivalent vaccine used against all three polio strains — could also be used in other countries, such as certain parts of India where polio type 1 remains prevalent.
Sanofi-Aventis, the world’s third-largest drug maker, has been working on the vaccine and is expected to produce it, a WHO spokeswoman said.
The WHO is waging a global campaign to stop polio transmission by year-end, despite a 50 percent rise in cases worldwide last year to 1,185. Africa accounted for all the increase due to a Nigerian-centered epidemic sweeping the continent.
The grants are separate from a $1 billion cash boost to get life-saving vaccines to millions of children in poor countries, announced earlier this week by Microsoft founder Gates and the government of Norway.
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