Push to revive Thailand's vaccine industry

Published on August 14, 2009
The Nation

The Public Health Ministry will ask the government to set up a national institute to develop a vaccine against deadly diseases including dengue hemorrhagic fever and Japanese encephalitis which affect thousands of victims every year.

"Vaccine development is a national agenda.... [its]direction... in the long term must be addressed by the government," Public Health Minister, Witthaya Kaewparadai said yesterday.

He was speaking after a national vaccine committee meeting on vaccine development, which was abandoned 20 years ago.

He said currently Thailand has only a national vaccine committee office operating under the Department of Disease Control, which is not flexible enough.

Moreover,Thailand wastes money importing vaccines from pharmaceutical companies - such as the Japanese encephalitis vaccine - which is required for over 800,000 children.

" If we could develop vaccines by ourselves, that would mean standing on our own feet and no longer depending on other countries for imported vaccine," he said.

National Vaccine Committee Office directorgeneral, Dr Jarung Moungchana said the committee will ask the government to budget Bt100 million to support the building of a pilot plant to conduct clinical trials and produce dengue hemorrhagic fever and Japanese encephalitis vaccines.

It will be established by the Government Pharmaceutical Organisation (GPO), Mahidol University, and the Department of Medical Science.

These three institutes will develop a cellbased vaccine production technology which would respond more rapidly to a pandemic, rather than the decadesold traditional method of producing it in chicken eggs.

He said if this pilot plant meets World Health Organisation certification, it could produce vaccine for export to other countries facing outbreaks of either disease.

The committee also approved plans to expand a BCG vaccine production plant run by Thai Red Cross Society's Queen Saovabha Memorial Institute. It would produce tuberculosis vaccine on an industrial scale for export to Asia and Africa, where the disease is spreading widely.

The committee has given the green light to a plan to develop a vaccine cocktail against diphtheria, whooping cough, and tetanus and a new and more effective tuberculosis vaccine.

The development of the TB vaccine is now in phase two in tests in Europe and United States - and Jarung said Thailand would produce its vaccine from these two regions' research.

Next month, GPO will undertake human trials on a liveattenuated vaccine against the typeA (H1N1) virus. It is expected to produce 2.8 million doses of flu mist nasal spray by the end of this year.

Meanwhile, a "Mister Health" campaign will soon be launched in Bangkok to educate workers in large companies about dengue fever, deputy Bangkok governor Malinee Sukkhavejworrakij said. Part of the campaign will involve the mass sanitisation of markets in Bangkok,both privatelyrun and those operated by the city administration.

She said the fatality rate from 2009 influenza in Bangkok had now reached 22, including three in the previous week, with 590 cases still receiving hospital treatment.