ISLAMABAD – Japan’s Takeda Pharmaceuticals is to get $38 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop a vital polio vaccine for the use in developing countries that costs low.
As part of a global plan to eradicate the crippling disease, of which experts say the world could see the last case this year, countries will need to switch from using oral polio vaccine (OPV) to using so-called inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) to ensure the disease does not reappear.
Experts fear a substantial worldwide shortage of IPV once every country in the world is ready to make the switch, and polio eradication strategists have been looking at how to avert that shortfall by encouraging new manufacturers into the sector, a private news channel reported.
– A polio-free world –
Chris Elias, the Gates Foundation’s head of global development, said that the partnership would help ensure that the world has enough vaccine to get the job done and maintain a polio-free world. Takeda said in a statement it would use the Gates funding to develop, license and supply at least 50 million doses per year of so-called Sabin-strain inactivated poliovirus vaccine (sIPV) to more than 70 developingcountries.
The shot will be made available at an affordable price for countriessupported by the GAVI vaccines alliance, which is backed by the Gates Foundation, the World Health Organisation (WHO), UNICEF and others to fund raising programs in poor countries.
