Sanofi Pasteur, Sanofi’s vaccines division, recently received regulatory approval from Brazil for the company’s dengue fever vaccine, called Dengaxia, which is designed to protect people from contracting dengue fever from infected mosquitoes.
This is the company’s third-consecutive approval from a country at endemic status for the virus. The two earlier countries were Mexico and the Philippines.
There are 1.4 million dengue fever cases in Brazil for 2015. The nation hopes to make progress against the virus by using this new vaccine.
“This new approval of Dengvaxia by the ANVISA, a well-recognized and World Health Organization-certified regulatory authority is an important milestone for Sanofi Pasteur,” Guillaume Leroy,
Sanofi Pasteur’s vice president of dengue vaccine, said. “Dengvaxia has the potential to significantly reduce the dengue disease burden and to help Brazil reach the WHO’s 2020 dengue reduction objectives.”
The country plans to vaccinate everyone between the ages of 9 and 45 who lives in regions that are considered endemic.
“Approval of the first dengue vaccine is an important public health breakthrough with critical importance to our country, which bears the greatest dengue burden in Latin America,” Joao Bosco Siqueira of the Department of Community Health, Institute of Tropical Pathology and Public Health, Federal University of Goias, Goiania, Brazil, said. “The 2015 dengue outbreak is still very present in the minds of Brazilians, so Dengvaxia’s approval is a most welcome addition to our ongoing dengue prevention efforts.”
