French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi has created a vaccine for dengue, and Mexico is the first country to allow the use of the vaccine on people located in endemic areas, ages 9 to 45 years.
"We are making dengue the next vaccine-preventable disease," said Olivier Charmeil, executive vice president for vaccines at Sanofi, according to The New York Times.
The company plans to achieve that goal with the vaccine it dubbed Dengvaxia.
Dengue is common in tropical areas and infects an estimated 400 million people each year, with Mexico and the United States as one of the many affected areas, according to the World Health Organization.
The approval of Dengvaxia by Mexico's Federal Commission for the Protection against Sanitary Risks is based on results from an extensive clinical development program involving more than 40,000 people of different ages, geographic and epidemiological settings and ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds living in 15 countries, according to NDTV.
The vaccine reduced the risk of hospitalization by 80 percent and lowered the possibility of developing the severest, hemorrhagic form of the disease by 93 percent, according to Guillaume Leroy, head of the dengue team of Sanofi, Business Insider reports.
Mexico has participated in three phases of those trials, giving it first-hand experiences with the results.
Shipping of Dengvaxia to Mexico is set to start early next year.
