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Merck, the American pharmaceutical major, and Wellcome Trust, the largest charity of Britain, will be setting up a non-profit firm in India, which will be manufacturing cheap vaccines for the emerging world.
Hilleman Laboratories, as the company has been named, will be headed by Indian-origin medical scientist Altaf A. Lal, who currently works at the US embassy in India looking after health.
Wellcome Trust director Mark Walport mentioned that the first vaccine which will be developed by the company, which will be set up in Hyderabad, will be for countering Group A streptococci. Group A streptococci currently affects about 18 million people in the emerging nations leading to the death more than half a million people every year.
A 2004 Indian study estimated that Group A streptococci, which causes rheumatic fever and disability, could affect up to half a million people in India every year.
