The Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH) announced a new effort to make a Japanese Encephalitis (JE) vaccine available to those who need it most in Asia. The Gates Foundation has committed US$ 27 million to this five-year effort called, Children's Vaccination Programme. Based at the PATH headquarters in Seattle, the CVP project aims to improve disease surveillance, accelerate development of an improved vaccine, and integrate JE vaccine into the immunization programme in Asia.
The JE virus is a member of the same family as the West Nile Virus, which emerged in North America in 1999. Both diseases are spread by mosquitoes, can cause inflammation of the spinal cord and brain, and can be fatal. But West Nile kills one in 100 infected people, while JE kills one in three.
Most of JE's victims are children below 15 years of age. Almost half of all survivors are left with a long-term disability, including paralysis, seizures, and mental retardation. "One of the big challenges with JE has been the difficulty in diagnosis," said Dr Julie Jacobson, CVP' s director for the new project. "JE is frequently mistaken for other diseases as diagnostic tests are not readily available. Our programme supports efforts to improve clinical surveillance of this disease, so that the magnitude of the problem can be understood. We also want to catalyze more efforts to control the disease. The most important step is to leverage work on increasing the availability of a safe, efficacious vaccine."
From its origin in Japan, the JE virus has spread to other parts of East Asia, South Asia and Southeast Asia and now threatens three billion people. Recent outbreaks of JE in India and Nepal have raised serious concerns that the disease is spreading more rapidly. Although severely under-reported, about 30,000 to 50,000 cases are reported each year throughout Asia, with 15,000 deaths annually.
A mouse-brain vaccine against JE has been in use since 1941, but it requires three doses to work, and cannot be easily produced in the quantities needed. "Newer, more efficacious vaccines will soon become available," says Dr. Mark Kane, director of CVP. "We are looking into which one will be the most promising to pursue for wide scale adoption".
Dr Regina Rabinovich, director of the Gates Foundation's Infectious Diseases programme, emphasized the urgency. "Recent outbreaks of JE in Asia demonstrate the urgent need to increase access to an effective vaccine. We hope that this initiative will help save the lives of the many children currently at risk for this disease."
CVP will work in collaboration with partners in the Global Alliance for Vaccine and Immunization (GAVI), including ministries of health, UNICEF and WHO, to ensure that developing countries are ready to use the vaccine. They will strengthen disease surveillance networks and educate the medical community and policy makers about the vaccine's public health benefits.
"Ultimately, the project depends upon all GAVI partners' ability to successfully build stronger immunization programmes that can finance and introduce new vaccines to protect the vulnerable," said Jacobson.