Bill & Melinda Gates Foundations’ “Impatient Optimists”: Severe Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease (HFMD) is now vaccine-preventable (at least in China)!
Melvin Sanicas, global health fellow and program officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, discusses China’s development of two vaccines for hand, foot, and mouth disease (HFMD), which “recently emerged in the Asia-Pacific region as the most severe epidemic disease affecting children.” Sanicas writes, “Having two vaccines against HFMD made in China is not only a milestone in the global vaccine field, but a testament to the hard work and innovation of the country’s scientific community and a boost to the local manufacturing sector” (1/8).