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Global progress in TB vaccine development

Published on July 11, 2013   41 min

A selection of talks on Vaccines

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0:00
My name is Helen McShane. I'm professor of vaccinology at the Jenner Institute in the University of Oxford. I'm a clinician by training and I have led the TB vaccine program at the University of Oxford for the last 10 years.
0:17
Tuberculosis or TB remains a very significant cause of both disease and death throughout the world. The World Health Organization (WHO) figures for 2010 where there were 8.8 million new cases and 1.45 million deaths attributable to tuberculosis. The emergence of drug-resistant strains of mycobacterium tuberculosis have compounded the problem and reduced our ability to effectively treat this disease. We now have multi-drug resistant (MDR) strains, extensively drug-resistant (XDR) strains, and now totally drug-resistant (TDR) strains. The geographical overlap with the HIV epidemic and the TB epidemic has had a devastating impact, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, but also in India and China. In addition, it's estimated that a third of the world's population are latently infected with TB. These people are at risk of reactivation should they become immunosuppressed for any reason and globally the commonest cause of immunosuppression is co-infection with HIV.
1:30
This figure demonstrating estimated TB incidence rates in 2010 is taken from the World Health Organization and clearly demonstrates that the burden of the disease is in Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in Southern Africa. However, looking at the map, there is very clearly a significant amount of disease throughout many parts of the world, particularly Southeast Asia, India, China, and the Russian Federation.

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