Demand for dengue vaccine to exceed supply

Decades in the making, the dengue vaccine’s arrival is now in sight, but demand from the 2.5 billion people at risk of contracting this mosquito-borne disease will be much greater than the initial supply, health experts warn. “The vaccine is just around the corner, but the corner is four years from now,” Luiz Jacintho da Silva, director of the South Korea-based International Vaccine Institute (IVI), an organization strategizing vaccine distribution, told IRIN. “It is promising, but not an answer to all of our prayers.” While dengue vaccine development has been widespread among research institutions and pharmaceutical companies, Sanofi Pasteur, the largest vaccine developer in the world, is years ahead of the rest. If all goes well in the ongoing clinical trials, experts say immunizing the public may begin as soon as 2015. But the estimated 300 to 400 million people who will want the vaccine is too...