India has now developed a vaccine against rotavirus, which is known to cause severe diarrhea. The new vaccine, costing about a dollar, is expected to prevent many children from dying due to severe diarrhea caused by the virus.
Around the world, rotavirus-induced diarrhea kills about 435,000 children under age 5 every year. The latest vaccine, called Rotavac, will be made by Hyderabad, India-based Bharat Biotech.
"This is an important scientific breakthrough against rotavirus infections, the most severe and lethal cause of childhood diarrhea, responsible for approximately 100,000 deaths of small children in India each year," K Vijay Raghavan, India's Department of Biotechnology official, said in a statement to the media.
The National Institute for Health's The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) was involved in the development of the new vaccine. Rotavac has a strain of Rotovirus that was isolated, manufactured and tested in India.
"We are deeply gratified to have played a role in establishing the safety and efficacy of the ROTAVAC vaccine. No infant or child should die as the result of rotavirus-induced severe diarrhea. NIAID is proud to be among the scientific partners who have worked over the past decades to potentially make that affliction a thing of the past for the children of India," said Anthony S. Fauci, M.D. Director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, in a statement.
The Phase III clinical trial involved about 6,800 children from India who were aged 6 to 7 weeks at the start of the study.
Bharat Biotech said that the drug will be widely available in India and will be cheaper than the current vaccines against the virus.