JAKARTA, INDONESIA (BERITAPOLITIK.ONLINE) — Senior CMC Advisor, Vaccine Development Rayasam Prasad and Gates Foundation Senior Program Officer Regulatory Affairs Charles Preston visited the BPOM office in Jakarta on Thursday (15/5/2025).
Head of BPOM Taruna Ikrar said the meeting was a follow-up to the working visit of Gates Foundation CEO Bill Gates.
‘At that time, President Prabowo conveyed various strategic issues, including cooperation in the health sector with the Gates Foundation which has been going on since 2009,’ Taruna Ikrar explained.
During a visit to the Presidential Palace in early May 2025, Bill Gates raised social issues related to tuberculosis (TB) in several countries.
He also revealed that he would provide grants to the Indonesian Government amounting to Rp2.6 trillion for the health sector, technology, and social assistance related to TB treatment and clinical trials.
On the occasion, Rayasam expressed the Gates Foundation’s appreciation for BPOM’s important contribution to Polio eradication.
The Gates Foundation partners with PT Biofarma to support research to production for the global supply of the new Oral Polio vaccine (nOPV), particularly nOPV2.
The Gates Foundation also looks forward to collaborating with BPOM, particularly in enhancing BPOM’s regulatory capacity in the field of vaccines.
In addition to Polio treatment, Indonesia’s cooperation with the Gates Foundation also includes TB treatment with efforts to reduce the death rate from TB in Indonesia.
This collaboration includes the implementation of phase 3 clinical trials for the M72/AS01E-4 TB vaccine candidate in Indonesia supported by Wellcome.
The M72 vaccine is a recombinant protein fusion tuberculosis vaccine originally developed by GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals, SA (GSK).
TB patients in the world currently reach 10 million people and Indonesia has the second highest number of patients with 1 million people. In Indonesia, the death rate from this disease reaches 125-130 thousand people per year.
The TB vaccine has been available since 1920 in the form of BCG vaccine which is generally given to children, while this clinical trial is given to adolescents (15-17 years) and adults (18-44 years).
The clinical trial in Indonesia involved 5 clinical trial centres, namely Persahabatan General Hospital, University of Indonesia Hospital, Research Centre for Care and Control of Infectious Disease (RC3ID) Padjadjaran University, Jakarta Islamic Hospital Cempaka Putih, and Faculty of Medicine University of Indonesia.
The clinical trials recruited around 20,000 subjects in total and in Indonesia have recruited 2,095 subjects.
Successful clinical trials and development of new vaccines will improve access and health status of the Indonesian people.