JAKARTA — Indonesia plans to run clinical trials of several vaccines to fight surging cases of tuberculosis this year, with concerns the disease might affect economic growth, ministers said on Monday.The Southeast Asian country has seen TB cases spike in the past few years, with Jakarta's Health Ministry estimating there were over 1 million cases in 2023, compared to about 820,000 in 2020.In 2022, Indonesia's TB deaths reached about 134,000, the second highest in the world after India.
Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said Indonesia planned to conduct a trial of a TB vaccine developed by global pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline in July, involving 2,500 people. The vaccine development is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.A clinical trial for a vaccine made by China's CanSino Biologics is also expected this year, Budi added.'We hope to be one of the first countries to do tuberculosis vaccination,' he told the same meeting.