The new system is the world's first to diagnose the disease a mere six to eight days after contagion, thus to spectacularly reduce hemorrhagic fever mortality rates and prevent complications, Marcel Tuigunov, Immunopreparat vice-manager for research, said to a news conference today.
It took the think-tank a bit longer than fifteen years to elaborate the system, which presently has no analogue in Russia and elsewhere. The diagnostics will now come under four-month clinical tests at Moscow's Research Institute for Medical Biological Preparation Standardization and Control. If the tests prove successful, Immunopreparat will launch its brainchild into mass production.
One set suffices for 96 tests, and costs a tentative 1,500 rubles, roughly $50 (R28.41/$1 is the Central Bank of Russia rate for today). Bashkortostan, where the hemorrhagic fever morbidity rate is one of Russia's highest, needs an annual average 40,000 sets.
The area is one of the world's worst natural foci of hemorrhagic fever, with several thousand patients every year. The disease often proves fatal. Bashkortostan came through its worst epidemic in 1997, with nine thousand cases, 34 of them lethal.
Immunopreparat is celebrating its centenary this year. It was established, June 1905, as a rabies vaccination center. It made a tremendous contribution to the war effort during World War II to mass-produce more than thirty preparations against infantile and wound infections, cholera, typhus and typhoid fever for the army and civilians alike.
At present, it is making fundamental and applied research in microbiology, virology, immunology and biotechnologies. The company produced medicines and immunobiological preparations to more than a billion rubles last year alone.
