"It's a major step in the prevention of dengue and for public health," Olivier Charmeil, head of Sanofi's vaccines division, said in a statement.
Dengue fever is caused by any one of four related dengue virus that’s transmitted through mosquito bites. Once infected sufferers experience painful flu-like symptoms that, in severe cases, have the potential to cause life-threatening dengue hemorrhagic fever or dengue shock syndrome. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that as many as 400 million people are infected yearly; about 22,000 people die from it.
Mexico was the first to approve the vaccine on December 11, 2015. Then last week on December 22, 2015 Philippines became the first Asian country to approve the vaccine. Dengvaxia recently secured the green light in another country: Brazil, where over 1.4 million cases of dengue fever were reported in 2015 alone. The vaccine is currently being reviewed in about 20 other countries in Asia and Latin America.
The United States had it’s own scare with Dengue fever earlier this year when cases appeared in Hawaii and Florida. In Puerto Rico the disease is already considered endemic.
Dengvaxia is a not a flawless vaccine. Clinical trials show that it works to prevent the disease in about 60% of cases; this means that the vaccine has a one third chance of being ineffective. Furthermore, the efficacy of the vaccine is restricted to people between 9 to 45 years old. This excludes young children and the elderly, arguably the populations most at risk who need a dengue vaccine the most. But an imperfect vaccine may be better than no vaccine at all.
Sources: Scientific American, Yahoo News