The attenuated (weakened) vaccine is being developed by Cuba’s Finlay Institute and is due to go to clinical trial with children later this year. It is the result of over ten years of work carried out in collaboration with the National Scientific Research Centre (CENIC).
The vaccine has the advantage over others currently available that it will be taken as a single oral dose. According to the Institute’s Reinaldo Acevedo Grogues, this is because the live vaccine continues to reproduce after swallowing, acting like several doses.
The Institute is developing another cholera vaccine. This is an inactivated vaccine, which will be cheaper to produce than the attenuated version. According to Sonsire Fernandez Castillo, live vaccines in general demand substantial resources, technologies, and logistics for production.
She added that there is also a fear that administrating live vaccines to immune-depressed patients, such as the ones suffering AIDS, may affect them negatively.
The inactivated vaccine would be administered orally in two doses.
Post published in: Africa News