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• Havana
• national
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• 11 / 21 / 2009

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The director of the Havana-based Finlay Institute and member of the Politburo of Cuba’s Communist Party, Concepcion Campa, said the first clinical trials of a pneumococcal vaccine will begin in Cuba next year.
    

Speaking in a round table discussion during the Global Forum for Health Research in Havana, Dr. Campa said that the 7-valent conjugate vaccine is being developed by the institution she leads and by the Center of Biomolecular Chemistry.

Pneumococcus is an almost exclusively human pathogen that causes a varied number of infections (pneumonia, sinusitis, peritonitis, among others) and severe invasive processes such as meningitis and septicemia, mainly in the elder, children and immunodepressed people.

Campa highlighted the enormous investments made by the Cuban Government in order to have facilities with good production practices and possibilities to be inspected by national and foreign authorities.

She also recalled that Cuba has produced more than 10 vaccines over the last 20 years, which have allowed the country to reduce its infant mortality rate to 4.7 deaths per every 1000 live births. Among these vaccines, she mentioned the vaccine against meningitis B and against tetanus.
       
Source: ACN