Policy for Developing Countries for Storage, Distribution, and Use of Essential Vaccines for Immunoprophylaxis

Abstract

The importance of veterinary vaccines lies not only in their value as significant tools for immunoprophylaxis of animal diseases but also for evaluating the newer technologies for vaccine production for the control of human diseases. The first large-scale vaccine produced using genetic engineering was against diarrhea of piglets in 1982 in The Netherlands by the Dutch firm Akzo. There is great potential for the development of a vaccine against the animal forms of sleeping sickness, which is transmitted by tse—tse flies; the control of this disease could permit breeding of cattle in vast tracts of Africa, which has not been possible hitherto because of this disease. Significant progress has been made in the development of a vaccine for foot-and-mouth disease. The gene that codes for one of the virus’s coat proteins, VPI, has already been cloned and inserted into Escherichia coli. Once purified, this protein is likely to act as an effective vaccine against the foot-and-mouth disease virus. The VPI vaccines produced by genetic engineering could offer substantial advantage in terms of cost as well. Among the advances in this area is the cloning of a rabies virus antigen.