The Malaria Vaccine: Is it Still a Holy Grail?

For over millennia, Malaria has existed and destroyed several precious lives. With the path-breaking advances in medical science and technology, mankind has, on innumerable occasions, launched an attack to control this parasite. However, all those efforts were to no avail. Several clinical practices to test the candidate vaccine are still underway.

 What are the threats to the development of a malaria vaccine?

If figures are something to go by, mankind has an impressive gain by saving close to 1.1 million lives that almost succumbed to this fatal disease in a span ranging from 2001 to 2010. Such a feat was possible owing to the use of some advanced drugs and bed nets treated with insecticides. Nevertheless, the battle against Malaria has just escalated to a different level as a larger section of mankind is making no bones about showing resistance against the use of such powerful drugs and insecticides. 

What are the prospects of a developing a successful malaria vaccine?

A malaria vaccine is different from any other vaccine (such as that of polio, tetanus, etc.) due to the fact that it has to work with other interventions. First, due to the complexity of Plasmodium parasite’s genome, it has been a herculean task to derive a potent vaccine for averting the disease. Several renowned scientists are carrying out clinical trial (currently in phase three) for preventing the disease. But harboring the complexness of the parasite’s DNA, it is not wise to expect the probable vaccine to singlehandedly tackle the disease. As per the clinical trials taking place in 11 sites of Africa, the candidate vaccine (Mosquirix) is used with insecticide bed nets.

The complexity of vaccine development has always been critical for getting human race out of the clutches of some of the baneful diseases. Hence, only acclaimed name such as Hilleman Laboratories must be thought whenever a vaccine development task is at hand. Apart from vaccine development, the company prepares different types of immunization chart such as immunization schedule for kids. The company believes in the concept of global immunization and strives to achieve it; for any other detail go to – http://www.hillemanlabs.org/.

Examine the Rise and Fall of Immunization Cost in Developing Countries and its Usefulness

For the developing countries, vaccines have made feasible some of the greatest public health successes in the last decade. The supply of high-impact Immunization helps avert an estimated 2.5 million child deaths each year. Vaccinesmanufacturing laboratories are striving to spread awareness about the up and coming technologies & processes executed in the field of vaccine development. The process of vaccine development involves high investment costs and the facilities require the optimum use of resources. Apart from the cost, there is no dearth of speculations involved when it comes to acquiring high quality and effective vaccinations for the general public. It also requires adequate research and development, quality control and quality assurance in the field of vaccination. However, the investment cost has been an important aspect to maintain world-class infrastructure for vaccine. As resources and facilities for vaccines manufacturing are available in abundance, on the other hand laboratories have to face a number of problems to initiate a research and development in developing countries. In addition, the world’s vaccine market is very small—below 2 percent of the pharmaceutical market—attracting few suppliers.

It has been examined that the prices of traditional vaccines have decreased significantly. The immunization cost of traditional six vaccines of the Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI), measles, diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, oral polio and BCG has shown a radical decrease in cost. Because the fixed costs of development of these vaccines have been covered long ago, and because their production costs have been lowered due to the learning curve and economies of scale, their prices are relatively low.  In the past years, there has been excess production capacity of these vaccines as new producers have entered the market, thus sales at low prices covered the variable costs of producing extra doses of vaccine, and did not require additional capacity.

Hilleman Laboratories is intended to participate actively to develop and optimize vaccines for developing countries to ensure healthy tomorrow while keeping its investment costs in control. The lab understands the constant need of vaccines by developing countries and for this reason puts more emphasis on the supply of high impact immunization for kids and even promotes awareness campaigns in rural areas about how to keep track on immunizationschedule for kids. The lab develops high-impact, thermal stable and cost-effective pneumococcal vaccine and conjugate vaccine for developing countries. Hilleman Laboratories was set up in 2009, the first time a research charity joined hands with a drug maker to develop affordable vaccines to prevent diseases that commonly affect people in low-income countries. The firm has successfully promoted and supplied a heat stable, affordable and easy-to-use rotavirus vaccines used to prevent diarrhoea in children.






Corporate Office and R&D Laboratory

MSD Wellcome Trust Hilleman Laboratories Pvt. Ltd.
2nd Floor, Nanotechnology Building, Jamia Hamdard

Hamdard Nagar, New Delhi – 110062 (India)

Ph: +91 11 30997700 Fax: +91 11 30997711

Website: www.hillemanlabs.org

Qualitative Vaccine Research is an effective way to ensure global health

A lot of medical institutes and laboratories are concentrating on vaccine research to help the nation in achieving vaccine transfer to prevent a number of deadlier diseases. Child immunization is one of the major areas where more focus is needed by the laboratories and the experienced medical research centres. It has been seen that globalimmunization is the matter of great concern when it comes to promoting global health on a larger scale. Besides this one cannot overlook the fact that with each passing day the requirement of initiating the idea of protecting children from contracting diseases such as diphtheria, smallpox, polio, cholera, typhoid and malaria through adopting  better-quality immunization methods.

Promoting vaccine research is one of the major challenges arising in health sector faced by the developing countries. For decades, experienced researchers and doctors have contributed to spread education and awareness on various vaccines like TB vaccine, hepatitis vaccine and HIV vaccine. However with passage of time it has become the struggle as lot of barriers are taking shape that certainly reduced the chances of getting the right kind of research measures. Problems are even arising due to the growing population in rural areas as it doesn’t seem to be realistic to enhance the quality of life in rural or backward areas of developing countries.

According to the recent research vaccine delivery done by various laboratories for the child immunization has become the prominent way to cope with the growing number of diseases. In addition, it adds to the growth of the society and can contribute to the growth of future generation in terms of facilitating healthy lives. Injecting the lives of children through immunizing them on time is indeed a best approach to initiate vaccination of high quality and efficiency. This can be done through involving in various global immunization campaigns and awareness campaigns. As we all know that children are most vulnerable because their immune systems are practically defenseless against the poisons in the vaccines. They have a lot going against them since their mothers do not pour on immunity through breast milk because they were vaccinated and no longer make certain antibodies. The fact is that the human immune system has been designed to protect us from even deadly illnesses but the key here is natural immunity. Vaccines, on the other hand, use synthetic chemicals to build artificial immunity. They work on the assumption that natural immunity is not good enough. While doctors are undertaking research on vaccines they make sure that the vaccine should pass various quality and sensitivity tests to ensure safe and effective vaccine delivery. This further includes that vaccines should pass the tests and it cannot be proven safe until they are given to human beings for the first time. But this would turn them into human 'guinea pigs' and it is not possible to predict what reactions they will have. This way the best researches can take place while keeping all the positives and negative effects in mind, it can lead to better deployment of factors that are responsible for the research.

Prepare Immunization Chart for Children to Bestow Good Health to your Newborn Baby

                       

Good health is the best gift you can give to your new born baby, as we all are aware of the fact that newborn babies are prone to get affected easily by viruses or diseases because of their low immunity level in comparison to adults. Therefore newborn babies need to be cared the most which is feasible when parents are well informed and literate about all the major or minor aspects of child immunization and prepare an easy to remember immunization chart for children after consulting an experienced doctor. Your family doctor could also suggest you the best laboratories in your town from where you can get all the vaccines for your children.

If you are expecting a baby then I recommend you to research as much as you can as it will surely provide information about the recent development in immunization and vaccine schedule for children. Hence your child can enjoy an immunized life. Here are some research based vaccine recommendations that would certainly help you to prepare an immunization chart for children. However the wise way is always to consult your family doctor to take help and make sure you would not skip even a single vaccination of your baby.

At the time of birth, vaccinations that are suggested are Hepatitis B: Hepatitis B vaccine (HBV); recommended to give the first dose at birth within 12 hours, but may be given at any age for those not previously immunized.

The child of age group 1 to 2 months, the recommended vaccine is Hepatitis B: Second dose should be administered 1 to 2 months after the first dose.

The children of 2 months, the suggested vaccines are for DTaP: Diphtheria, tetanus, and acellular pertussis vaccine. Hib: Haemophilus influenzae type b vaccine, IPV: Inactivated poliovirus vaccine, PCV: Pneumococcal conjugate vaccine, Rota: Rotavirus vaccine.

During the age of 4 months, the recommended vaccines are DTaP, Hib, IPV, PCV, and Rota. Once your baby reaches the age of 6 months, the recommended vaccines are DTaP, Hib, PCV and Rota.

With the arrival of new advancements in the health sector, world’s best laboratories are contributing their best possible efforts and funds towards initiating global immunization programs and campaigns in rural areas of developing countries. As the world is witnessing the change in terms of economic and social development, health sector has also shown an outgrowth therefore the development of vaccines has increased rampantly to meet the growing needs of the inhabitants from all across the globe.

According to CNN Health, the most notable change to the vaccination schedule in the 2013 version is that what had been two schedules — for ages 0 to 6 and 7 to 18 — has been consolidated into "one comprehensive list, covering children from birth through age 18". There are some suggestive measures that can be taken up and would definitely help you to be well-informed about the proficient laboratories that are well-known and gained substantial prominence in vaccine optimization for children.