Vaccine industrialization in Korea: focus on major improvements and future direction

Editorial When a disease-causing microorganism passes through the body, causes disease, and then recovery occurs from the disease, protective immunity is gained against the disease. A vaccine is a biological preparation containing artificially made protective immunity. Historically, through the use of these vaccines, humans were able to gain freedom from many kinds of dangerous infectious diseases; therefore, the significance of vaccines is beyond estimation. For example, in Korea, life threatening infectious diseases such as measles, rubella, Japanese encephalitis, polio, diphtheria, and tetanus have permanently disappeared. And, one of the most shameful fact that the Korean children showed the highest incidence of tuberculosis mortality rate in Asia has turned into the same situation of the developed countries. Korea received the announcement of eradication of both polio and measles in the year 2000 for the first time in the Western Pacific region. However, these vaccines are mostly imported from overseas. Furthermore, the most basic vaccines, such as diphtheria , tetanus and pertussis (DTP) vaccine, polio vaccine, tetanus and diphtheria (Td), tetanus, diphtheria and acellular pertussis (Tdap) vaccine, bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine, and Japanese encephalitis vaccine, which are implemented by the National Immunization Program (NIP), are all imported from overseas. Also, the inflow of newly developed vaccines from global companies occurs frequently, causing confusion among users because of vaccines with overlapping coverage. As a result, the conditions involved in the development and manufacture of vaccines in Korea are still very elementary. However, new changes are starting to take place. A few pharmaceutical companies that have recognized the importance of the vaccine business have initiated an effort to develop and manufacture vaccines. These fetal movements in vaccine industrialization are very positive and desirable in terms of the development and manufacture of vaccines in Korea in the future. However, it is a pity that willing companies that possess insufficient technology make only impractical investments , and that some do not understand the significance of expense and time required for the development of vaccines. Also, the country itself recognizes vaccines simply as an industrial product and has interest only in the industrialization of vaccines without any regard to their implications as part of national defense, which is also very important For vaccine industrialization, a thorough base must take precedence. There must be a manpower pool that has the ability to develop vaccines, comprising of experienced This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of …