Reported by Al Jazeera
Experts have said the US-funded trial would deny critical vaccines to thousands of infants.
Guinea-Bissau has reportedly halted a controversial United States-funded hepatitis B virus vaccine (HBV) trial which drew global scrutiny when experts said it involved withholding lifesaving shots from thousands of babies.
The trial failed to gain the necessary government approval, one researcher involved in the project said in a statement, adding that the end of the trial was a “significant setback” for African science.
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The West African nation’s judicial police said in mid-October that it had raided the facilities of the research group leading the project in the capital, Bissau, and seized vaccine batches.
Authorities said inquiries were continuing to determine whether the trial had complied with the country’s safety standards.
The trial was designed to assess the effects of World Health Organization (WHO)-recommended HBV vaccines on two groups of babies. One group would receive the vaccine at birth, and another, chosen at random, would receive it six weeks later.
Some 14,000 babies were expected to be involved in the trial. The researchers planned to assess health outcomes over five years for the two sets.
The project secured $1.6m from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) under Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy, who has previously made his anti-vaccine views known.
However, the announcement of the trial in December last year met with widespread anger over the withholding of the vaccine from one set of babies. In January, the Guinea-Bissau government paused the project and launched a review.
The Danish research group, Bissau-based Bandim Health Project, part of the University of Southern Denmark, planned the trial.
It is chaired by prominent scientists Christine Stabell Benn and Peter Aaby, a married couple. Since 1978, they have run the Bandim Health Project out of Bissau and have conducted studies on thousands of Bissau-Guineans.
Both researchers primarily study unintended impacts of vaccines and have theorised that vaccines which contain inactivated viruses can cause death, including the HBV vaccine which they planned to test in Bissau.
Their counterparts in Denmark have, however, repeatedly accused them of downplaying trial results…