Why in news?
- On 15 July, 2019, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) launched the third-phase trials for an anti-Tuberculosis vaccine that could be administered to anybody aged six years and above.
- Current BCG vaccines are only for neonates.
- The WHO End TB Strategy aims at a 95 per cent reduction in TB mortality and a 90 per cent reduction in TB incidence worldwide by 2035.
- Accordingly, there have been 2.8 million tuberculosis cases in the country with 1,47,000 multi-drug resistant TB cases.
- Around 4.23 lakh people are killed and HIV-TB deaths stand at around 87000.
- The proportion of TB burden in India is 27 percent higher than worldwide.
- The government pledged to eliminate tuberculosis in this situation by 2025.
- The two vaccine candidates, ‘VPM1002’, which is produced by the Serum Institute of India, Pune and MIP (Mycrobacterium Indicus Pranii) are being worked upon.
- The study would enroll 12,000 healthy household contacts of a patient whose sputum has tested positive for TB and are therefore at high risk of contracting the disease.
- The trial would be done on patients’ contacts from seven sites: Delhi, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Odisha, Tamil Nadu and Telangana.
