While dengue infections skyrocket in Argentina with more than 28,000 cases so far in 2023, the country’s health authorities are trying to give the green light to a vaccine that can protect people against the four serotypes of a virus that left 14 deaths according to official figures.
In 2017, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned of contraindications in the only vaccine against dengue worldwide, Dengvaxia. A drug that should not be given to people who have not been previously infected with the virus due to the increased incidence of hospitalization with very severe symptoms.
Waiting for the approval of the authorities
Against this background, the only drug that has good results in preventing hospitalization is called Qdenga, a vaccine developed by the Japanese laboratory Takeda that was recently approved in the European Union and that has been taking drugs for a month in Brazil, a country that suffered a considerable increase in dengue cases last year.
“That have a authorization by others entities regulators is something positive, because those entities regulators they made the evaluations and that this showing that the data hold to this vaccine in terms of security and it that is his functionality, that is the effectiveness. Recently, Brazil the just of authorize, So that the ANMAT, that is ours entity regulator, very probably I finished also giving his seen positive to the use of this vaccine,” he says about it. Daniela Hozbor, director of the VacSal Laboratory of the Institute of Biotechnology and Molecular Biology of the Faculty of Exact Sciences of the National University of La Plata.
important gestures
“This vaccine this done about a platform of virus attenuated about he dengue 2, but contains components of the others serotypes from he dengue 1 until he dengue 4. So, Well, HE addition in Europe, in Brazil, and let’s hope promptly here in the Argentina, a new tool of prevention, although we know that there is others measures that already the can be applying, as are avoid the hatcheries and the sting of the mosquitoes”, explains the specialist.
It stresses that as long as it has not been approved in Argentina, you shouldn’t sit idly by and you shouldn’t let water accumulate in containers: “SIf we have a bucket, turn it over, if we have a tank, put a lid on it, if we have pets, change the water frequently in their drinking troughs… Everything that can accumulate water and we don’t use it, throw it away. We can do all of this and it is necessary to do it given the outbreak that we are experiencing, ”says Hozbor.
The Dengvaxia vaccine is approved in about 30 countries in Latin America and Asia where the disease burden is high. In South America, the vaccine has been privately marketed only in Paraguay since November 2016.
Dengue fever and other diseases caused by mosquito-borne viruses are spreading much further and farther under the impact of climate change, the WHO warned last week, fearing global rebounds.
