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A pharmaceuticals company and a humanitarian charity are to vaccinate almost a tenth of the population of Honduras.
The programme, for 675,000 people, will be delivered jointly by the US-based multinational Merck and the Project Hope health education organization, in co-operation with the Honduran government.
Merck, which recently established a non-profit laboratory for Third World vaccines, will donate all the medicine, and has contributed $300,000 (£183,000, €208,000) to strengthen a separate three-year healthcare programme.
The vaccine will protect against pneumococcal infection, a common cause of pneumonia, from which 1.6 million people die worldwide every year, and will be targeted at particularly vulnerable communities. Project Hope will work with the Honduran health ministry and community health groups.
Eduardo Cortes, managing director of Merck’s Central American operations, said the move was part of Merck’s aim of improving access to its vaccines and to building healthcare capacity in the Americas.
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