World’s First Single-dose Dengue Vaccine Approved for Use in Brazil
By Maeve Cullinan – Global Health Security Reporter
The vaccine will be particularly useful for hard-to-reach groups living in the Amazon rainforest, experts say
The world’s first single-dose vaccine for dengue fever has been approved for use in Brazil and will help protect isolated communities in the Amazon, experts have said.
The jab, known as Butantan-DV, protects against four strains of dengue and will be initially administered to one million people in early January, after Brazil’s drug regulators granted it approval earlier this month.
All the other vaccines for dengue, the mosquito-borne disease commonly known as ‘breakbone fever’, require multiple doses with intervals of three-months – making them harder to use in remote areas like the Amazon basin, where access to healthcare is limited and mosquitoes thrive.
Butantan-DV is a live vaccine, meaning it uses a weakened version of the dengue virus to generate immunity without causing disease. It was evaluated for nearly a decade in clinical trials involving more than 16,000 volunteers across Brazil.
The vaccine showed 74.7 per cent overall efficacy and 91.6 per cent efficacy against more severe disease in late-stage human trials, according to the Butantan Institute, a public research organisation that developed the jab.
The single-dose jab will be particularly useful for hard-to-reach groups living in the Amazon rainforest
The new jab will mean indigenous communities, who are more vulnerable to developing severe illness from dengue due to poor sanitation and healthcare access, will not need to make multiple long journeys to health clinics, and the hope is they can be vaccinated in a single community health visit.
It is estimated that between 2.5 to 3 million people live in the Amazon rainforest, away from major cities and large towns.
“It is much more difficult and expensive to apply a two-dose vaccine in remote and hard-to-reach regions, such as the Amazon, crossed by rivers and with still very precarious land connections,” Jesem Orellana, an epidemiologist at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, a leading public health research institution, told the Science and Development Network.
Dengue, which is mainly spread by day-biting Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus mosquitoes, can cause high fever, severe headache, intense muscle and joint pain, and a blotchy rash.
Brazil suffered its worst outbreak of the disease last year, with 6.4 million cases and 5,972 deaths reported in 2024, according to the health ministry.
The Aedes albopictus mosquito, also known as the ‘Asian tiger mosquito’, has recently become established in Europe and multiple local cases of dengue have now been recorded in countries including France, Italy, and Spain.
In a recent briefing attended by The Telegraph, Sir Chris Witty, England’s Chief Medical Officer, told journalists Aedes albopictus are “marching steadily northward” and that he would “expect this mosquito to become established [in Britain] in the next decade or two.”
In Britain, people who have had dengue fever before – a second infection makes severe illness more likely – are eligible to receive the Qdenga dengue jab, a 2-dose vaccine, if they are travelling to a high-risk country.
It is not available on the NHS, and costs between £120-£140 per dose privately.
