Accessibility may be hindered by limitations in a health system’s ability to provide adequate support in areas including administration, financing, production, distribution and infrastructure. Furthermore, there should be strong reasons to believe that the existing vaccine is likely to remain inaccessible in the future, and the new vaccine, if proven efficacious, will not be subject to the same limitations that have prevented use of the existing

vaccine. In this situation, a placebo arm might be justified to assess how effective check details the trial vaccine is compared to no vaccine. Example. Diarrhoeal disease due to rotavirus infections is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in India. Two efficacious rotavirus vaccines to protect against severe rotavirus gastroenteritis exist [14], but their cost remains

prohibitive in many LMICs and experts debate the likely local efficacy of the vaccines in some countries. Although the existing vaccines were licensed in India, they were not – nor were they planned to be – introduced into the national immunization programme for reasons of cost http://www.selleckchem.com/products/Trichostatin-A.html and a lack of data on vaccine efficacy in Indian children. An Indian vaccine company and a consortium of partner organizations conducted a placebo-controlled trial of a new low-cost vaccine that was based on a Thymidine kinase strain of rotavirus isolated in India and targeted at infants in India and other LMICs [15]. To mitigate risk in the placebo arm, the trial design included close monitoring of all participants to identify and treat cases

of gastroenteritis as early as possible. This system of active surveillance and early evaluation and treatment significantly reduced the mortality risk of severe rotavirus gastroenteritis in the study population. An existing vaccine is tested against a placebo to evaluate its safety and efficacy in the trial country prior to uptake and introduction into the health system. As there is sometimes insufficient information about the safety and efficacy of existing vaccines in different settings, the status of an existing vaccine as “established effective” in a particular local context may need to be determined. Example. A conjugate vaccine against pneumococcal disease, based on seven serotypes, had been developed and was included in the routine vaccination programme of many high-income countries. Although the vaccine was expected to protect against pneumococcal disease in Africa, it was unclear if the seven included serotypes were appropriate for use on this continent. In addition, there was uncertainty about the burden of disease in Africa, particularly pneumococcal pneumonia, where a causative agent cannot be isolated in most cases of pneumonia.