The World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday published for the first time a list of 17 pathogens for which "vaccines are urgently needed."
"We are doing this because we would like to move vaccine development from being focused on commercial returns to being focused on regional and global health needs," WHO vaccine expert Dr Mateusz Hasso-Agopsowicz told a news briefing.
This is the "first global effort to prioritize endemic pathogens based on criteria including regional disease burden, risk of antimicrobial resistance and socioeconomic impact," WHO said in a statement.
The development of vaccines against these 17 pathogens is at different stages, with some still in the research stage, such as for hepatitis C, while for others vaccines are close to regulatory approval, policy recommendation or market introduction, such as for dengue virus.
These vaccines "would significantly reduce the diseases that greatly affect communities today" but "also the medical costs faced by families and health systems," stressed Dr Kate O'Brien, director of the WHO's Immunization Department, in the press release.
In its choices, WHO confirms long-standing priorities for research and development (R&D) on vaccines, particularly against HIV, malaria and tuberculosis – three diseases that collectively cause nearly 2.5 million deaths worldwide each year.
WHO also draws attention to pathogens such as group A streptococcus, which causes serious infections and is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths each year, mainly in low-income countries.
"Another example among the new priorities is Klebsiella pneumoniae, a bacterium associated with 790,000 deaths in 2019 and responsible for 401,000 neonatal deaths due to bloodstream infection (sepsis) in low-income countries," the WHO statement said.
Dr Hasso-Agopsowicz explained that the 17 pathogens mainly affect low-income countries.
"What has generally happened in the past is that vaccine research and development has been driven by the cost-effectiveness of new vaccines. This means that diseases that severely affect low-income areas unfortunately receive much less attention," he said.
"With this list, we hope to give them direction. We are giving them direction," he said.
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