Britain is backing the first new TB vaccine in more than 100 years which is expected to save millions of lives.
Immunity from the current BCG childhood jab - the most widely used vaccine in the world - wanes before the teenage years.
It comes weeks after a Mirror investigation into the TB pandemic in South Africa revealed how lack of funding has meant no adult vaccine has been developed as the disease is this year expected to overtake Covid-19 as the world’s most deadly infectious disease killing about 4,300 people a day.
The UK’s Wellcome charity and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have joined forces with £430million to co-fund final clinical trials.
The breakthrough comes as mutant superstrains of TB resistant to antibiotics are on the rise and could be imported to Britain.
Julia Gillard, board chair at Wellcome, the leading London-based research charity, said: “TB remains one of the world’s deadliest infectious diseases.
Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said: “With TB cases and deaths on the rise, the need for new tools has never been more urgent.
“Greater investment in safe and effective TB vaccines alongside a suite of new diagnostics and treatments could transform TB care for millions of people, saving lives and lowering the burden of this devastating and costly disease.”
The Phase III clinical trial into the M72 vaccine candidate, developed by GSK, will enrol 26,000 participants at 50 sites across Africa and Asia, part-funded by £120 million from Wellcome.
The previous Phase II showed 50% efficacy in reducing TB lung disease in adults with latent TB infection - an unprecedented result in decades of TB vaccine research.
The World Health Organisation said that if successful such a vaccine would prevent up to 76 million new TB cases and 8.5 million deaths over 25 years.
TB requires a very long course of antibiotics taken for at least six months and is a major driver in antibiotic resistance globally.
The new jab could avert the need for 42 million courses of antibiotic treatment
The Mirror last month reported from South African slums where mutant TB is widespread. Experts told how it receives a tiny fraction of the funding going to Covid because it mainly affects the poor.
They pointed out no new vaccines have been developed in 100 years against TB, which has been around for 9,000 years.
By contrast five were developed for Covid-19 in less than two years.
WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus hailed the backing of Wellcome and the Gates Foundation.
He said: “The tuberculosis crisis demands a new vaccine to reduce disease transmission and avoidable death, especially targeting adults and adolescents who carry at least 90% of the TB epidemic’s burden.
“WHO welcomes the commitments from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Wellcome to take forward development of this vaccine candidate.”
The WHO put annual TB deaths at 1.6 million during 2021, with 2022 figures expected to be higher. Our World in Data, based at Oxford University, puts Covid-19 deaths in 2022 at around 1.2 million.
Latest data shows a TB rate of 7.8 cases per 100,000 people in England in 2021, up from 7.3 the previous year. This compared to 4.7 in Germany and 2.4 in the US - which is on the way to eradicating the disease.
TB rates are higher in England than other UK nations but numbers crept up in Scotland and Wales last year.
