Prick against tropical disease on the market: vaccine for travel to dengue country | inland

Every year, according to the RIVM, about 150 Dutch people contract dengue during their trip and a few dozen more people become infected on the Caribbean islands that belong to the Netherlands. Worldwide, dengue fever is advancing rapidly and 90 million people are infected, 500,000 of whom have a more serious course of illness with severe fever and some also bleeding.

“You can now see that dengue is also appearing in Southern Europe due to climate change,” says Eric van Gorp. The professor of internist-virologist at Erasmus MC has been researching the potentially deadly disease since the 1990s, earning him the nickname ‘doctor dengue’. Dengue is spread by mosquitoes and belongs to the group of viruses that can cause bleeding, such as Ebola and Marburg.

To survive

The mosquitoes thrive on the increasingly warmer planet and are now even able to survive in the Netherlands – if they are introduced here, for example, in stagnant water in imported car tires or bamboo plants. For the time being, however, the Dutch are mainly at risk when they travel, where until recently they could only protect themselves with DEET and good clothing. According to Van Gorp, a vaccination is therefore an important additional option.

An Asian tiger mosquito.

Ⓒ ANP / HH

“The longer or the more often you travel, the higher the risk, of course,” says Marc Broeren, medical director of Takeda. The drug Qdenga was approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) last December. “That means that people can now also order it in the Netherlands. Since then we have been working on a stock, and it is now with the wholesalers,” says Broeren.

Pharmacies or travel vaccination clinics can order it there. For full vaccination, a person needs two injections, three months apart. An injection costs about 100 euros, says Broeren. The protection is not 100 percent, but it is substantial. “If you were to send a full plane to Brazil, for example, ten people would be bitten by mosquitoes with dengue. Normally 5 get sick and 1 ends up in the hospital. After vaccination, only 1 becomes ill and 0.1 ends up in hospital.”

Medication

“This is really an important step forward,” says Van Gorp about the find. Especially since there is currently no medication against dengue fever. “This vaccine is especially important for areas where dengue is endemic. It is also important for travelers and will be given a place in travel advice.” Broeren adds that Qdenga is being rolled out worldwide as far as he is concerned.

According to the Dutch Medicines Evaluation Board (MEB), an earlier vaccine was authorized on the Dutch market, but Dengvaxia was never actually offered here. This had to do, among other things, with an incident in the Philippines. Dengue comes in four different types. A vaccine must provide sufficient protection against all types, because the risk of a serious course of infection is greater in case of reinfection,” says Van Gorp. Suppose you receive a vaccine against types 1 and 3, and then a mosquito bites you with type 4, then you could become much sicker. That is exactly what happened at Dengvaxia, but does not seem to be happening at Qdenga.