At an event held on February 9, at the Butantan Institute, vaccination against dengue began with the Butantan-DV immunizer, which protects against the four dengue serotypes and is the first in the world administered as a single dose. In the first phase, the vaccine is being administered to primary health care professionals and will subsequently be made available to the general population between 12 and 59 years of age. The first administration was carried out by Brazil’s Minister of Health, Alexandre Padilha, on community health workers from the city of São Paulo, Lucimeire Francisca Coelho and Francisca Raquel de Oliveira, who represented approximately 216,000 primary care professionals – including physicians, nurses, community health workers, and endemic disease agents – who will receive the doses in the coming weeks.
On the same day, an investment package of BRL 1.4 billion was announced for the expansion and modernization of vaccine and serum production to serve the Brazilian population through the Unified Health System (SUS). The investments will enable the construction of a tetravalent vaccine manufacturing facility against human papillomavirus (HPV); the renovation of the vaccine production and development unit using messenger RNA (mRNA) technology for the production of the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API); a new facility for the production of the API for the DTPa (diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis) vaccine; and the refurbishment of the serum production building and the creation of a new filling and lyophilization area. All works will be carried out within the institute’s existing industrial complex and will be financed through an allocation of approximately BRL 1 billion from the federal government’s New Growth Acceleration Program (Novo PAC), and approximately BRL 400 million as state counterpart funding, through the Butantan Institute, an agency of the São Paulo State Secretariat of Health, via the Butantan Foundation.
The announcement was attended by Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva; Vice President Geraldo Alckmin; Ministers Fernando Haddad (Finance), Guilherme Boulos (General Secretariat), Márcio França (Entrepreneurship), and Paulo Teixeira (Agrarian Development); the São Paulo State Secretary of Health, Eleuses Paiva; and the director of the Butantan Institute, Esper Kallás, among other authorities. USP President Aluísio Augusto Cotrim Segurado was among the institute’s partner guests who composed the panel of authorities. An infectious disease physician and professor at USP’s Medical School (FM), Segurado was among the professors of the current Minister of Health in the 1980s. The school’s dean, Eloísa Bonfá, also attended the event on February.
Lula emphasized the importance of public investments in innovation and technology for health. “We need to celebrate the world’s first dengue vaccine, something of ours, created by us, researched by us, and perhaps with more investment we can also produce it in sufficient quantities to help other countries poorer than ours”, the president said. “Those who invest the most in research in this country are the public sector, and this is not an economic decision to help this or that state. Supporting Butantan means having the primacy of saying that we are helping 215 million souls who live in this country and who need the Brazilian state to invest”.
“The investments strengthen the technological autonomy of the Butantan Institute and expand the response capacity of public health, with national vaccine production”, São Paulo State Secretary of Health Eleuses Paiva said. “In addition, later this year, Butantan will also begin the production of treatments to combat cancer. In this way, we provide greater possibilities to public managers, reducing costs and promoting greater equity, universality, and sustainability of our health system”. He also praised the joint efforts on behalf of the population. “Today we are taking a very important step in the public health of our country, with a tripartite partnership providing robust support to a project that strengthens and values the SUS”, he said. “We believe in science and we believe that we must increasingly expand people’s access to the Unified Health System. Therefore, it is a day of victory for Brazil”.
For Esper Kallás, who is also a professor at USP’s Medical School (FM), the vaccine is the greatest tool of medicine in reducing inequality. “What health system would be able to accommodate all children with measles and its complications if the vaccine did not exist?” he said. “It is estimated that, at a minimum, 6 million children and other immunodeficient individuals would die every year if it were not for vaccines. Expanding Brazilians’ access to health care is our mission. These investments will enable us to diversify and increase our supply to the SUS of essential products for people’s health, such as the HPV vaccine, which protects women against different types of cancer, and to develop our mRNA platform, a cutting-edge technology that will allow us to respond more rapidly to public health demands. And, after 15 years of development, the dengue vaccine arrives at a moment when our institution completes 125 years, becoming a central part of the process of seeking self-sufficiency in the production of immunobiologicals in Brazil. It is moving for all of us who worked on the development of this vaccine to see it reach the arms of health professionals, who are on the front line of the fight against diseases. Butantan-DV is a historic milestone of Brazilian science that is beginning to show real impact in the daily lives of the population”.
English version: Nexus Traduções, edited by Denis Pacheco
