Oxford University

New TB vaccine on the horizon

A research team at Oxford University in the UK is very close to determining the efficacy of their new tuberculosis (TB) vaccine. If current clinical trials are successful, it will be the first new TB vaccine in almost a century.

The urgent need for a new vaccine is emphasised by research showing that extensively drug-resistant (XDR) forms of the disease are rapidly spreading.

Today, most babies in the world are immunized with the old Bacille Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine, first used in 1921. The leader of the Oxford research team, Helen McShane, says it saves children's lives, but beyond infancy its effects are limited.

Source URL: 
http://www.plusnews.org/Report/96557/HEALTH-New-TB-vaccine-on-the-horizon

The dilemmas of co-payment and moral hazard in the context of an NHI

Published by: 
UCT Health Economics Unit

The use of ‘co-payments’ to deal with possible ‘over-utilisation’ of health care services is a key point of contention in policy debates related to South Africa’s National Health Insurance proposals.

Over-utilisation occurs when health care provision (in instances when it is free at the point of service), leads to inappropriate and excessive utilisation.  Co-payments mean users still receive health services that are heavily subsidised (from public funds in the case of the proposed NHI), but have to pay something towards the cost of services – this aims to curb the frivolous use of services and avoid over-utilisation.

HIV/AIDS vaccine trials underway

The South African AIDS Vaccine Initiative (SAAVI) on Monday announced the start of the first of several human trials to be conducted in the country. According to Dr Glenda Gray, national principal investigator of the tests, Phase 1 of the trials includes concurrent testing of a preventive HIV/AIDS candidate, AVX101, in the United States and South Africa. The HIV Vaccine Trials Network, the vaccine research arm of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), will undertake the US tests. The vaccine trials, conducted in Soweto and the port city of Durban, will be looking at the safety of the vaccine, and how the immune system responds, Gray said during a press briefing. A total of 24 participants in South Africa are involved in the first phase. A trial of another vaccine, HIVA.MVA, designed by the University of Nairobi in Kenya and Oxford University in the United Kingdom, will start in South Africa next week with up to 55 volunteers. The first phase of human trials of the vaccine has been completed in Kenya and is underway in Uganda. A key difference in all these trials will be the involvement of communities, Dr Andrew Robinson of the SAAVI HIV Vaccine Research Unit in Durban, noted. In other vaccine trials [communities are] usually involved at the end, and it is an unequal partnership between scientists and communities. It was therefore essential to develop appropriate community expectations around the announcement of the start of the trials, SAAVI director Dr Tim Tucker warned. What we are trying to put across is that a vaccine is not a panacea. We still need to advocate for health sexual practices. Nevertheless, the vaccine body's community preparedness efforts were starting to bear fruit, said SAAVI deputy director Dr Ashraaf Grimwood. The group has managed to reach 700 South African organisations, and has held up to 90 workshops since 2000. SAAVI now runs a toll-free vaccine line to answer the public's questions and has also developed school modules on HIV/AIDS vaccines.(Source: Plusnews, IRIN, 3 November 2003) LINK//\// For more on SAAVI: http://www.saavi.org