Science / Medicine : Leprosy Vaccine Tested

With unlikely help from armadillos, experts are developing a vaccine aimed at combatting leprosy. The vaccine being tested in Malawi and Venezuela could help reduce the disease, which still afflicts 15 million to 20 million people worldwide, according to experts at an international leprosy conference in The Hague.

“We expect that the vaccine will work both on people who have never been infected and on those who are in a high-risk group because they are already infected,” said Shaik Noordeen of the World Health Organization.

Some 30,000 people have been inoculated with the vaccine in Venezuela, another 120,000 are receiving it in Malawi and a third project involving 300,000 recipients is expected to begin in India next year, Noordeen said. The vaccine combines a bacterial substance taken from armadillos with a tuberculosis vaccine known as BCG (bacillus calmette-guerin).