Dengvaxia, World's First Dengue Vaccine, Gets Mexican Approval -- What You Need To Know

The first vaccine for dengue has been approved in Mexico. The vaccine, called Dengvaxia, is produced by global healthcare leader Sanofi and has been tested on 29,000 patients all over the world, Al Jazeera reports.

According to a report from Bloomberg, quoting Olivie Charmeil of Sanofi, though Dengvaxia has gained clearance in Mexico, they are still expecting for more approvals in Latin America and Asia. The company further said that Dengvaxia has the ability to "reduce dengue due to all four serotypes [strains] in two-thirds of the participants," per Al Jazeera. The said vaccine aims to alleviate dengue cases from individuals between nine to 45 years old.

Back in 2014, the World Health Organization (WHO) also noted that the said vaccine had a 60.8 percent effectiveness rate against the four types of dengue. The news outlet said that dengue, a disease spread through mosquito bites, occur in wealthier urban areas in countries with a middle-wage income such as Latin America and Asia, apart from Africa. Approximately 390 million people annually are said to be infected by dengue in these three regions.

Though the 60.8 percent effectiveness rate is quite low for a common vaccine, which generally is at 95 percent, Dengvaxia is different because it shows great effectiveness in terms of curing the most deadly type of dengue called dengue haemorrhagic fever. According to the company, Dengvaxia has "prevented [nine] out of 10 cases of severe dengue and [eight] out 10 hospitalisations due to dengue."

The said drug, which has been developed over the past 20 years with a cost of $1.65 billion, is estimated to achieve $1.4 billion in sales by 2020.

“We are making dengue a preventable disease, which makes us incredibly proud,” Charmeil told Bloomberg. Meanwhile, Guillaume Leroy, vice president of the dengue vaccine team, said that children under nine years old are not advised to be injected by the vaccine. According to him, clinical studies show that the vaccine is less effective for children under this age.

"The evidence from the vaccine trials is that it can prevent hospitalisation for about 80 percent of those who get vaccinated," Cameron Simmons, professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Melbourne, told Al Jazeera.

He added, "It would need to be very widely used in order to result in a major reduction in the prevalence of dengue."

As per Bloomberg, other companies have followed Sanofi's footsteps in creating "alternative approaches" to eliminate the dengue virus. Sanofi did not put an exact price tag on how much the dengue vaccine will cost, only assuring their plan to sell Dengvaxia at "a fair, affordable, equitable and sustainable price."