Thais Urged to Spearhead Vaccine Drive

Being recognised in a United Nations report on vaccines and immunisation as having one of the highest-performing immunisation systems in Southeast Asia, Thailand is encouraging regional collaboration to manufacture and supply cheap vaccines for certain types of tropical diseases.

The report, compiled by Unicef, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the World Bank, and released yesterday, said Thailand had made great strides with up to 90 per cent of children immunised.

Many countries in the region are capable of producing vaccines but most of the production is limited to supplying domestic demand, said Dr Supamit Chunsuttiwat, senior epidemiologist of the Public Health Ministry's Disease Control Department, at a media briefing.

And while those countries that could not produce vaccines, including Thailand, could buy new and expensive vaccines from Western companies, some very poor countries still cannot afford to buy even the basic vaccines, he said.

He added that drug companies had little interest in developing vaccines for regionally specific diseases such as dengue fever because they realise that it is not worth the investment.

"It would be better if we come to a give-and-gain-together situation," said Supamit.

With equal standards verified by the WHO, member countries could buy vaccines at much cheaper prices than those produced by Western drug companies when collaboration exists, he said.

The way to go, he said, was for the government to push collaboration at an Asean or Greater Mekong Sub-region forum.

Supamit also said that Public Health Minister Sudarat Keyuraphan was very interested in the idea and would probably present it to regional forums soon.

Likewise, Indonesia - the biggest vaccine-producing country in the region - had expressed strong interest in the collaboration.

Thailand, he said, could produce a vaccine for Japanese Encephalitis at a very cheap price that might even attract Japanese and South Korean participation. With more than 90-per-cent immunisation coverage for the most common diseases such as polio, tuberculosis and hepatitis, the Kingdom is rated as the best performer, said Dr Bjorn Melgaard, a WHO representative to Thailand and to the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific.