In Other news By KoKetso MaMaBolo
A new TB vaccine?
New research brings hope
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ccording to TBFacts.org, 80% of the South African population is infected with TB bacteria. The good news is the majority have latent, rather than active TB. This means the number of bacteria is small enough for your immune system to handle and for no symptoms to surface. The bad news is that South Africa has a high prevalence of active tuberculosis cases, but recent developments from the University of Cape Town suggest we’re getting closer to more solutions.
Hope at tHe end of tHe tunnel Part of the University of Cape Town’s Health Sciences Faculty, the South African Tuberculosis Vaccine Initiative (SATVI) has the singular focus of developing a vaccine for tuberculosis. “A new, effective vaccine has the potential to save hundreds of thousands of lives worldwide,” according to SATVI. “We are testing multiple new vaccine candidates in clinical trials. We are also completing projects to address critical clinical, epidemiological, immunological and human genetic questions in TB vaccine development.”
40 | Public Sector Leaders | March 2023
Dr Munyaradzi Musvosvi, TB research officer at SATVI, recently told an NPR reporter about a breakthrough they had made in finding that could aid the development of an mRNA vaccine for TB. The current vaccine only works for children, and the latest progress could lead to people of all ages receiving the necessary protection. Using blood samples from high school students that had been frozen for years, Dr Musvosvi and other researchers went about trying to find out what the difference was between those who had shown signs of exposure to TB, without getting sick, and those who did fall ill.
