Vaccines and World Health: Science, Policy, and Practice

Since the advent of biotechnology in the mid-1970s, many people have been attracted to the prospect that its products might bring about rapid improvements in human health, especially in the poorest countries of the world. This timely work focuses on preventive and diagnostic technologies, particularly vaccines aimed at the infectious, vector-borne and parasitic diseases so widespread in the developing world. It explains the pathways that such products must take to achieve their goal of improving human health, identifies the various groups having a stake in this process, and discusses the concerns and risks facing each group. The book has been written for several groups of readers: 1) laboratory investigators, primarily in the industrialized world, who develop vaccines and other biotechnological tools, 2) the persons responsible for public health and disease control programs in the developing world, 3) the managers, investigators, epidemiologists and others who participate in the process of taking a product "from bench to bush" and 4) students of public health, medicine, economics, international relations and other disciplines that have an interest in technology transfer and international health.

Paul F. Basch is Professor of International Health at Stanford University and a consultant on health programs in developing countries. He is the author of "Textbook of International Health" (OUP, 1990) and more than 100 field and laboratory research papers, primarily on parasitic diseases.