Gateses give $27 million for vaccine effort

By Julia Sommerfeld
Seattle Times staff reporter

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An effort to stop the spread of Japanese encephalitis, a deadly Asian cousin of West Nile virus, has received a $27 million boost from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Children's Vaccine Program (CVP), based at Seattle's Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH), announced yesterday that it will use the money to help make a vaccine for the mosquito-borne virus available for people in at-risk areas of Asia.

Japanese encephalitis has long been what Dr. Julie Jacobson, CVP's director for the new project, calls an "orphan disease" — a plague of poor areas overlooked by the rest of the world.

Travelers from Europe or the United States are routinely offered vaccination against the virus, but millions of children who live in areas where it is endemic receive no protection.

"This grant is going to be the first large broad investment in solving this problem," Jacobson said.

Dr. Regina Rabinovich, director of the Gates Foundation's Infectious Disease Program, said the five-year grant will help narrow the gap between what can be done to fight Japanese encephalitis and what people in developing parts of Asia have access to.

Like the less-severe West Nile, which has spurred U.S. headlines each summer since it arrived in New York in 1999, Japanese encephalitis is transmitted by mosquitoes and can cause a potentially fatal inflammation of the spinal cord and brain.

There's no treatment for the Asian virus, and about 70 percent of infected children die or are left with long-term disabilities including paralysis or mental retardation. Across Asia, 30,000 to 50,000 cases of Japanese encephalitis and 15,000 deaths are reported yearly.

The virus spread from Japan to China, Korea, Southeast Asia, India and Australia, among a host of countries, and now threatens 3 billion people. Recent outbreaks, including a 1999 flare-up in Nepal that left 434 people — mostly children — dead, have raised alarm over the virus' spread.

A vaccine made from mouse brains has been available for Japanese encephalitis for more than 60 years, but it's expensive, difficult to produce in mass quantities and requires three doses plus booster shots. It's an option used in some wealthier countries such as Japan and Australia and among travelers, but Jacobson said the technology is too cumbersome and the supply too sparse to meet the global health need.

The Children's Vaccine Program aims to help accelerate the development and testing of two single-dose vaccines already showing promise. It also will work with partners including the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations, the World Health Organization, UNICEF and national ministries of health to ensure that developing countries are ready to use the vaccine when it arrives.

Jacobson predicts that within five years, there will be a vaccine widely available throughout Asia.

Julia Sommerfeld: 206-464-2708 or jsommerfeld@seattletimes.com

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