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The following statement—from Global Health Council, supported by the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the Global Health Technologies Coalition—was delivered at the 146th session of the WHO Executive Board Meeting on agenda item 10: Ending tuberculosis. Global Health Council supported by the Infectious Diseases Society of America and Global Health Technologies Coalition commends WHO and member states on accelerating efforts to meet TB elimination goals. Despite progress we are not on track to end the TB epidemic by 2030. If progress continues at the current rate, 28 million people will die by 2030 at a global economic cost of $983 billion. New investments by member states in TB R&D coupled with efficient technology assessment and evaluation of new TB products by WHO will be vital to building the arsenal of tools required to control TB.An estimated 3 million people with active TB infection continue to go undiagnosed and untreated. Countries are too often relying on old technologies, highlighting the need for investments in new drugs, vaccines and rapid molecular and point of care diagnostics, preventive therapies, and shorter, better quality treatments to ensure adherence and mitigate debilitating side effects. Growing resistance is making TB more deadly and difficult to treat. A new vaccine would be a gamechanger and is critical for addressing growing AMR by reducing the need for antibiotics. As TB is the most prevalent drug resistant infection, strengthening efforts against drug resistant TB is critical for curbing the AMR crisis.

The following statement—from Global Health Council, supported by the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the Global Health Technologies Coalition—was delivered at the 146th session of the WHO Executive Board Meeting on agenda item 8: Medicines, vaccines and health products.Global Health Council supported by the Infectious Diseases Society of America and Global Health Technologies Coalition commend WHO and member states on progress made towards achieving immunization goals. Despite these efforts, coverage of essential vaccines increased from 84% in 2010 to 86% in 2018, leaving nearly 20 million children unvaccinated every year. Polio has not been eradicated, and resurgence of measles threatens to undo decades of progress. Any post-2020 vaccination strategy must prioritize reaching those left behind and access to essential vaccines in conflict settings, among displaced persons and during outbreaks of emerging infections like Ebola. Improved immunization programs will help counter AMR and ensure existing medicines remain effective for longer. Vaccines are an essential prevention tool, and states must invest in R&D for new vaccine technologies and increased capacity for uptake of innovations within national immunization programs.  While we support recommendations for a post-2020 strategy placing countries at the center of strategy development, we urge prioritizing overarching global-level targets for vaccines like MMR, DTaP and IPV while allowing for disease surveillance systems at country or regional levels to inform other recommendations.We urge WHO and member states to improve efforts to address vaccine hesitancy, recognized by WHO as a threat to global health. Vaccine action plans should prioritize research to develop better tools for providers and public health programs to effectively communicate with vaccine-hesitant families and communities. We are encouraged to see the report noting the important role non-state actors can play in strengthening vaccine strategies. As infectious disease and global health professionals, we stand ready to work with WHO on developing new vaccine strategies, the vaccine R&D pipeline, and innovative solutions to ensure uptake of these critical health interventions.

Interested in more global health innovation news? Every week GHTC scours media reports worldwide to deliver essential global health R&D news and content to your inbox. Sign-up now to receive our weekly R&D News Roundup email. A broad study of a promising HIV vaccine has ended in failure after an interim analysis showed it was no more effective than placebo in preventing infection. Vaccinations for the Uhambo study in South Africa were halted following the determination on January 23 that 129 people who received the vaccine developed HIV while 123 people who were given placebo also contracted the infection. The trial began in 2016 following testing of a modified version of a vaccine that had proven to be modestly effective in a trial in Thailand four years earlier, thus warranting further study. The Uhambo study was only the seventh large-scale human trial of a vaccine for HIV, a virus that infected 1.7 million people worldwide in 2018, according to the Joint United Nations Program on HIV and AIDS. Two other large human trials of another HIV vaccine candidate, designed by Janssen Pharmaceuticals, part of the health care giant Johnson & Johnson, are currently underway. Funding to develop new technologies for some of the world’s leading infectious disease killers, such as HIV and AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria, reached a record high of US$4 billion in 2018 with strong increases from the private sector, according to the 2019 G-FINDER report. This marks both the largest real annual funding increase on record and the first time that funding has grown for three consecutive years. However, investments in research and development (R&D) for neglected tropical diseases (NTDs)—a subset of debilitating but lesser-known parasitic, viral, and bacterial infections—have plateaued in the past two years and even declined by $34 million over the last decade, according to the report, which was released on the first World NTD Day. The G-FINDER report provides a comprehensive annual look at investments in neglected disease R&D, including how investments are allocated across diseases and product types, funding trends over time, and potential gaps in funding. People showing no symptoms of the novel coronavirus appear to be able to spread it, according to a report in the New England Journal of Medicine. If this finding is confirmed, it will make it much harder to contain the coronavirus, which has caused an outbreak in China and has led the World Health Organization to declare a global health emergency. Some viruses can only be passed when a person is exhibiting symptoms, while others can be spread a day or two before the onset of symptoms—meaning people who are contagious but are asymptomatic can unknowingly spread the virus, complicating containment efforts. According to the report, a woman from Shanghai flew to Germany where she appeared to have passed on the virus to a German colleague a day or two before being symptomatic herself. As of Thursday, the coronavirus was reported to have infected nearly 9,700 people in China, killing 213. Approximately 100 more infections but no deaths have been reported in 18 other countries.

Interested in more global health innovation news? Every week GHTC scours media reports worldwide to deliver essential global health R&D news and content to your inbox. Sign-up now to receive our weekly R&D News Roundup email.  GlaxoSmithKline has licensed a promising tuberculosis (TB) vaccine candidate to the Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute in an effort to advance this vaccine for use in low- and middle-income countries. The institute will lead further development of the vaccine candidate and sponsor future clinical tests. The vaccine candidate, developed in collaboration with IAVI, was shown in mid-stage testing to be effective in approximately half of the people who were vaccinated for as long as three years. The only licensed TB vaccine that currently exists—called Bacillus Calmette-Guerin—prevents severe disease in infants and young children but gives limited protection to adolescents and adults. TB infects about 10 million people annually, killing about 1.5 million.A new research group at the National Institutes for Health (NIH) tasked with conducting human trials for vaccines against emerging health threats will be testing the first of likely many experimental vaccine candidates against the novel coronavirus that emerged in Wuhan China late last year. They hope to have a vaccine ready to test in just three months’ time. Chinese scientists quickly identified the genetic sequence and posted it publicly, allowing scientists to begin vaccine development without waiting for a sample of the virus. NIH scientists are now working with US biotech Moderna Inc. to develop an RNA-based vaccine, while additional candidates are in development by other funders and companies. According to Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci, three months from gene sequence to initial human testing would be the fastest the agency has ever gotten such a vaccine off the ground. As of Friday, Reuters reports more than 800 people in China have been infected with the new coronavirus and 26 have been killed. Cases have also been confirmed in Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Nepal, and the United States.According to a report by the Access to Medicine Foundation, the world is “precariously reliant” on a small number of pharmaceutical companies to develop new antibiotics, running the risk of a rise in superbugs. The biennial Antibiotic Resistance Benchmark report, which looks at pharmaceutical companies’ efforts to tackle antimicrobial resistance, found that only a core group of eight drug firms are developing antibiotics and that the pipeline of new products is very small. This report echoes a warning from the World Health Organization last week that a lack of private investment and innovation in the development of new antibiotics is undermining efforts to combat drug-resistant infections. Drug-resistant infections are predicted to kill 10 million people annually by 2050 if drug resistance continues to grow at its current rate—meaning that, increasingly, the treatments we rely on to kill infections are not working, and new ones are needed.