Giving Compass' Take:

• WHO recommends a test for previous exposure to dengue before the administration of Dengvaxia, a dengue vaccine created by Sanofi. 

• How should doctors balance the need for the vaccine with the potential risk? How can philanthropy help to increase the pace of the testing to increase the vaccinated population? 

• Find out how climate change is increasing cases of dengue


The World Health Organization (WHO) said Sanofi’s vaccine against dengue should only be used after testing on individuals to assess whether they have ever been exposed to the infection.

After a two-day meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, experts at the U.N. agency recommended extra safety measures for the medicine, sold as Dengvaxia.

“We have now clear information that the vaccine needs to be dealt with in a much safer way by using it exclusively in people already infected with dengue before,” Alejandro Cravioto, Chair of the WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) on Immunization, told reporters.

“It requires for the people to be tested through a system that is not currently available but that we feel will be developed in the next years,” he said.

The French drugmaker warned in November that Dengvaxia, first approved in late 2015, could increase the risk of severe dengue in some cases in people who had not been previously exposed to the disease.

Mosquito-borne dengue is the world’s fastest-growing infectious disease, afflicting hundreds of millions of people worldwide. It causes half a million life-threatening infections and kills about 20,000 people, mostly children, annually.

Read the full article about Dengvaxia by Matthias Blamont and Julie Steenhuysen at Reuters.