Our Projects – Fondazione Achille Sclavo

Rationale

The Fondazione Achille Sclavo focusses its activities on accelerating the development of vaccines against gastroenteritis and dysentery.

The priority for the development of vaccines to fight these childhood infectious diseases is based on:

– the extremely high impact of these illnesses on infant morbidity and mortality,
– the lack of adequate vaccines to fight these diseases in poor countries,
– the concrete possibility to make these vaccines available to poor countries within 5 to 10 years.

This chart outlines the current situation of vaccines against the principal childhood illnesses:

Enteritis and Dysentery: the first cause of death under 5 years of age
Pathogen	type	Vaccine availability
Rotavirus	virus	vaccine effective in children being introduced
Salmonella spp.	bacteria	vaccine effective in children NOT available
Shighella spp.	bacteria	vaccine NOT available
ETEC	bacteria	vaccine NOT available
V. cholerae	bacteria	vaccine effective in children NOT available

Respiratory infections: the second cause of mortality under 5 years of age
Pathogen	type	Vaccine availability
Pneumococcus	bacteria	vaccine effective in children being introduced
Haemophilus i. tipo b	bacteria	vaccine effective in children being introduced
Meningococcus	bacteria	vaccine effective in children available only for type A
Influenza	virus	vaccine available
Respiratory syncytial virus	virus	vaccine NOT available

More specifically our Priority Projects are:

development of a vaccine against Salmonella to fight typhoid fever,
development of a combined vaccine against Salmonella to fight typhoid and paratyphoid fevers,
development of a vaccine against non-typhoid salmonellosis,
development of a vaccine against Shigella.

Estimated number of deaths by causes in 2008 in children 1 to 59 months

projects1
Source: Robert E. Black et al.for the Child Health Epidemiology Reference Group of WHO and UNICEF Lancet online May 12, 2010