Dear colleagues
I have been following with keen interest this very well structured and managed e-conference, with very insightful expert views. My small contribution at this stage of the conference will be built on my more than 15 years in vaccine development and production, which have covered also the PPR vaccine. Including PPR in a combination or multivalent vaccine for small ruminants is undoubtedly the approach that will address many disease management, logistical and access challenges in most developing countries. It is equally clear that the combinations to be considered should take into account the situation of each regions in terms of disease prevalence. Combining vaccines has always been a tricky decision for vaccine manufacturers. One have to take into account for example the need to avoid combining a “public good” disease vaccine with a “production disease vaccine”. This would compromise the commercial value of one of them, as their commercialisation strategy are different (tender versus direct sales etc.). There is also the risk of cannibalising the market of one of them.
There are also technical and compatibility aspects that have been covered by many contributors, including Niwael. The authoritative intervention by Dr. Tounkara is also a strong basis to consider when deciding on combination strategy.
Over the past 5 years while in GALVmed, we were promoting jointly with many other colleagues the need to use Target Product profiles (TPP) as the basis for developing products that meet the real needs of the users, but also address everybody’s concerns. One of my recommendations for this session of the e-conference would therefore be that, all having agreed on the need for combination vaccines appropriate for different regions, that consensus TPPs be developed for the different combinations, maybe starting with the most commonly recommended one, which is PPR-S/GP. The consensus in developing such a TPP should be obtained from field experts, disease (or PPR virus) researchers, industry and veterinary services.
This could be one very useful outcome of the conference
Best wishes
Baptiste Dungu DVM PhD