How the World's First Dengue Vaccination Drive Ended in Disaster

Scientific American April 2019

Is a runaway immune reaction making a dengue vaccine dangerous?

In December 2015 then president Benigno Aquino III of the Philippines and others negotiated a deal with pharmaceutical company Sanofi to purchase three million doses of Dengvaxia, the first vaccine ever licensed for dengue. The plan was to give a million schoolchildren, nine years of age, three doses of the vaccine each, sparing them from the worst outcomes of dengue: shock, organ failure and death.

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