A 100-year-old vaccine, the bcg, has helped, but it is only partially effective. On June 28th two of the world’s wealthiest charities, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Wellcome, said they would fund a late-stage trial of a new tb vaccine known as m72. That will cost $550m, of which the Gates Foundation will contribute $400m, making it the charity’s biggest ever investment in a single product. Tuberculosis (tb), which kills one person every 20 seconds, is a forgotten pandemic. About a quarter of the world’s population has been infected with the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Most will never know, as they are asymptomatic, even though Tuberculosis is treatable, around 1.6m people each year, mostly in poor countries, nonetheless die from it.  Will the world get rid of chronic infections through vaccines ?

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