Finally, a Dengue Vaccine

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In the 15-point Atmasvasth guide to live long, healthy, the 5^th point is

5. Manage your medications, supplements, vaccines - daily, once in six months, yearly, one time

One subpoint is

Take your vaccines - zoster (shingles), pneumococcal, flu, TDP, etc. Ensure that all under 14 girls in your family take the HPV vaccine to prevent cervical cancer in adulthood.

I updated the vaccines guideline in May 2025. 

Vaccines against infectious diseases are a powerful weapon in our quest to maintain a long healthspan.

In Nov 2025, in my piece Monsoon Maladies,  I wrote how, due to a variety of reasons, the monsoons are associated with an increase in morbidity and mortality, especially in cities like Mumbai. In the end, I said 

The rains also bring mosquito borne diseases like malaria, dengue and chikungunya and it makes sense to increase mosquito control measures with whatever works best for you. Hopefully, some day, all 3 vaccines will be available in India to help reduce our risk of disease.

Finally, the dengue vaccine has been approved for use in India.

All of us living in India have suffered from dengue…this mosquito-borne disease has either affected us or someone in the family or some friend and once in a while taken a life. Post dengue muscle loss, long lasting weakness and brain fog are also well known though not commonly described. Yet, if you look at the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s National Centre for Vector Borne Diseases Control data on dengue, it lists just 121,824 dengue cases in 2025 and 131 dengue deaths, which as part of our Indian data and research problem is a laughable undercount. Accordingly to Dhwani Hariharan and colleagues [1], in 2016, the number of symptomatic dengue patients was 53 million or 5.3 crores and not in six figures or lakhs. The estimated undercounting is almost 282 times and the estimated economic burden in 2016 came to 5.71 billion USD, or almost 50,000 crores in today’s rupee terms, which is a crazy amount. Even if these numbers are taken with a pinch of salt and they lie between Hariharan/Shepard’s and the Government’s, it is clearly a huge problem.

The dengue vaccine (TAK-003), brand name Qdenga has been approved by CDSCO earlier this week on 21 Jul and will likely be available in a few months. Biological-E in Hyderabad manufactures these vaccines for Takeda the pharma company that has invented this vaccine and hopefully it will be reasonably priced for India.

Clearly, if the official count was correct, there would be no need to approve a vaccine for just 121,000 odd cases of dengue. It is because there is a tacit understanding that due to a variety of reasons, most cases of dengue are just not reported (and unlike tuberculosis, dengue is not a notifiable disease), that the vaccine has finally been approved. 

The vaccine is approved for people up to the age of 60. It works best in those who have already been infected once, which means most of us. Above the age of 60 years, there isn’t enough data, but that will likely change over the next few years. 

What does this mean for you and me?

When the vaccine is available in the next few months and I will write about it again in some more detail, please take it if you are below the age of 60.

For those above 60 (and that includes me), I will come back with guidance after speaking to infectious disease and other experts. 

For now, keep in mind that there is a dengue vaccine approved for use in India and that it will soon be available and you should consider taking it. 

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Finally a Dengue Vaccine

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Footnotes

1. Hariharan D, Das MK, Shepard DS, Arora NK. Economic burden of dengue illness in India from 2013 to 2016: A systematic analysis. Int J Infect Dis. 2019 Jul;84S:S68-S73. doi: 10.1016/j.ijid.2019.01.010. Epub 2019 Jan 11. PMID: 30641201.

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