Ghanaians battling with life-threatening Non-Typhoidal diseases can rest easier as scientists from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology have commenced a clinical trial of a novel vaccine against the diseases at Agogo, in the Asante Akyem North District of the Ashanti region of Ghana.

This study will assess the safety, and body’s reaction to the vaccine produced by GlaxoSmithKline.

The trial known as PEDVAC iNTS is sponsored by GSK Vaccines Institutes for Global Health (GVGH) in Siena, Italy.

Approximately 516 healthy people will be recruited for the trial.

“The participants are made up of 20 adults 18-50 years of age, 40 children 24-59 months of age, 60 infants 9 months of age, and 396 infants 6 weeks of age) will be recruited for the trial,” said Prof. Ellis Owusu-Dabo, Principal Investigator of the project.

The trial has already received approval from the KNUST Committee on Human Research, Publication and Ethics, Ghana Health Service Ethics Review Committee, Food Drugs Authority of Ghana as well as the Institutional Review Board of The GSK Vaccines Institutes for Global Health.

About Non-Typhoidal Diseases

Salmonella infections are broadly divided into Typhoidal (Enteric/Typhoid fever) and non-Typhoidal. The non-typhoidal infection (NTS) are mainly caused by Salmonella Typhimurium and S. Enteritidis and manifest as self-limiting gastroenteritis.

However, invasive disease (iNTS) which could rapidly cause death does occur particularly in resource-poor settings in sub-Saharan Africa among infants and young children with malaria, anemia, and malnutrition, the elderly and in the immunosuppressed, including HIV infected individuals.

Invasive non-typhoidal salmonellosis is very prevalent and can result in death particularly among children under-5 in sub-Saharan Africa. Unfortunately, many of iNTS fever illnesses are often misdiagnosed as malaria.

The burden of iNTS is huge particularly in sub-Saharan Africa as the region is home to over 400,000 of the 535,000 yearly cases estimated in 2017.

An estimated 59,100 iNTS deaths with more than half of them in children 5 years of age and a 14.5% case fatality rate was reported in 2017 and the sub-Sahara Africa sub-Sahara Africa sub-region disproportionately accounted for large percentage of these deaths.