Strep A Vaccine Fund Bridges Deadly Gap in Global Health Funding

Most people in wealthy countries know Strep A as the cause of strep throat, an uncomfortable but easily treated childhood illness. But globally, Strep A is responsible for an estimated 639,000 deaths per year. That death toll rivals those of HIV/AIDS and malaria, but Strep A receives dramatically lower levels of funding and public attention. Given the scale and neglect of this burden, we see a coordinated vaccine effort as one of the highest-impact opportunities in global health philanthropy. Today, we’re launching the Strep A Vaccine Fund: a multi-donor initiative to accelerate the development of Strep A vaccines.

Strep A (Streptococcus pyogenes) is responsible for hundreds of millions of cases of strep throat and skin infections each year, as well as scarlet fever and rarer but serious invasive conditions like sepsis and necrotizing fasciitis. Its most consequential effect, however, is rheumatic heart disease (RHD), a chronic condition that occurs when the body’s immune response to repeated Strep A infections misfires and damages the heart valves. Today, roughly 55 million people live with rheumatic heart disease, many of them young and in low- and middle-income countries or disadvantaged communities within rich countries. Without access to monthly penicillin injections or heart valve surgery — both of which are largely unavailable in the regions where the disease is most common — advanced RHD is often fatal.