When the scourge of tuberculosis is taking its toll in India — killing almost one person per minute — the experts have advocated that Indian Government should seriously look into its vaccination campaign and replace it with VPM vaccine which is considered to be more potent than BCG.
“The BCG cannot take control of all strands of tuberculosis. More stringent strands survive that allows TB bacillus to remain alive even after vaccination. It is high time that BCG vaccination campaign should be replaced with trusted VPM,” Vice-President AERAS, Karl l Stoever told The Pioneer here on Friday.
AERAS is an organisation that works globally on tuberculosis vaccines.
She said that Serum Institute of India has taken up the project for its clinical trial. “Originally a German vaccine, VPM, is found to be more effective than the available options. Once cleared the Union Government should switch over to it as soon as possible,” Stoever said.
Additional secretary Health, Government of India CK Mishra said that Government will take its decision only if Serum Institute approves.
India has the highest incidence of TB in the world, according to the World Health Organisation’s Global Tuberculosis Report 2013, with as many as 2.4 million cases. It reveals that India has 31% of the global total of missed cases. In addition, out of the 22 high-burden countries (HBCs), India was one that saw the greatest increase in multidrug-resistant (MDR) TB between 2011 and 2012.
The Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (Chandigarh) has estimated that one person in India dies of TB every minute.
Facts presented by the 44th Union World Conference on lung Health which concluded in Paris recently focused on India and China - the most endemic TB regions of the world. The need for appropriate funding for research and development to fight tuberculosis dropped by over $ 30 million but this fatal disease still killed 1,70,000 people in 2012.
The 2013 report on Tuberculosis Research and Funding Trends - that was released in Union World Conference on lung Health -- revealed that funding for Tuberculosis Research and Development (TB R&D) dropped by $30.4 million compared with 2011.
Funding declined for diagnostic, drug, vaccine, and operational research, increasing the likelihood that new tools to fight TB will remain out of reach for the 8.7 million people who develop TB each year.
Total funding of $627.4 million leaves a gap of $1.39 billion measured against the $2 billion funding target called for by the Global Plan. Reported funding has failed to meet the target in all five key research areas tracked by the report: Basic science, diagnostics, drugs, vaccines, and operational research.
“Pharmaceutical companies spent 22 per cent less on TB R&D in 2012 than they did in 2011,” said Treatment Action Group’s executive director, Mark Harrington. “Big Pharma has always trailed far behind the public sector in funding TB research, and now their wavering support is placing greater pressure on public institutions in the U.S. and Europe, which are battling short-sighted budget cuts due to sequestration and fiscal austerity.”
In the starkest illustration of this trend, Pfizer shut down its TB drug development program by closing its anti-infectives research division in 2012.
“Stopping TB requires new tools, and new tools require more research investment,” said Dr. lucica Ditiu, executive secretary of the Stop TB Partnership. “This report’s findings show the opposite, and are a double disappointment for the world. Investments in research today will pay for themselves many times over in years to come, but any delay now means pushing the opportunity to end TB further and further away.”
WHO estimates that fewer than 20 per cent of the world’s drug-resistant TB cases are diagnosed and treated. Because treatment is long, arduous, expensive and poorly effective, with global cure rates stagnating around 50%, scale-up of DR-TB, diagnosis and treatment is extremely difficult.