Kenya is among several countries taking part in a big international TB vaccine trial that could be the first breakthrough against the disease in over 100 years.
The vaccine candidate M72 is being given to 20,000 volunteers across five countries, namely Kenya, South Africa, Malawi, Zambia, and Indonesia. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Wellcome are funding the trials to a total budget of KSh89 billion.
Pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), which developed the vaccine, said on Wednesday that participant enrolment is now complete 11 months ahead of schedule.
If successful, M72 could become the first vaccine since BCG to offer real protection to older teens and adults the group most affected by tuberculosis. Currently, BCG is only effective for infants and offers limited protection against pulmonary TB, the most common form of the disease.
In Kenya, TB remains one of the top killers. The Ministry of Health estimates that the disease claims over 18,000 lives every year a grim statistic that underlines the urgency of finding a better vaccine.
“This could be a game-changer,” said Julia Gillard, chair of the board at Wellcome. “We need a vaccine that is affordable and available, especially for those nations where TB continues to cause so much suffering.”
Earlier, smaller trials of the M72 vaccine had been encouraging, lowering the risk of active TB by about 50% in people already infected with the bacteria. The current TB vaccine trial is meant to confirm those results at a larger scale and in more diverse settings.
The World Health Organization believes that even a moderately effective vaccine for teens and adults could prevent over 8 million deaths and stop 76 million new cases by 2050.
Kenya, which has a growing reputation for strong vaccine research and clinical trial capacity, is playing a key role in helping scientists test potential solutions for diseases that continue to hit developing nations hardest.
As the trials continue, health experts say the hope is simple: a shot that could finally turn the tide against one of the world’s oldest and deadliest diseases.