The father of vaccines against diarrhea for Vietnam suddenly died

Prof. Dr. Le Thi Luan - who spent 15 years diligently researching, producing successful vaccines against rotavirus diarrhea, suddenly died when she was only 53 years old.

Prof. Dr. Le Thi Luan - The person who successfully studied Rotavin-M1 vaccine suddenly died

Prof. Dr. Le Thi Luan suddenly died on August 6 last. On Friday afternoon (August 6), Prof. Luan still went to work normally.

On Monday, not seeing her coming to the office, people calling did not pick up the phone, rushed to a new home or bad news. She has 2 children currently studying in the US.

Prof. Dr. Le Thi Luan received the Vietnam Talent Award in 2014. (Photo: SKĐS)

Prof. Dr. Le Thi Luan, born in 1962 in Tho Tang, Vinh Tuong, Vinh Phuc, is the Deputy Director of the Center for Research and Production of Vaccines and Medical Biological Products, Ministry of Health.

In 1980, she passed the entrance exam to Hanoi Medical University in Internal Medicine and graduated from a good doctor in microbiology in 1989. After that, she returned to work at the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology.

In 1998, Prof. Dr. Le Thi Luan was assigned to monitor rotavirus diarrhea in Vietnam. At that time, Rota virus diarrhea was a dreaded disease in hospitals across the country with 50-70% hospitalization rate.

From here, she and her colleagues began to study vaccine against diarrhea caused by Rota virus. After 15 years, in May 2012, rotavirus vaccine was licensed and marketed by the Ministry of Health.

This is the first time Vietnam actively created all strains for vaccine production. This success has led Vietnam to become the second country in Asia and the fourth country in the world (after the US, Belgium and China) to produce its own vaccine against Rota virus.

The price of one dose of vaccine in Vietnam is only VND 250,000-300,000, equal to one third of the imported vaccine.

Rotavin-M1 vaccine was researched and produced successfully by Prof. Dr. Le Thi Luan.(Photo: H.Hanh)

The successful production of rotavirus vaccine has helped millions of Vietnamese children to solve their disease burden and help the state save about VND 100 billion per year.

The successful production of Rotavin-M1 vaccine has helped Prof. Dr. Le Thi Luan to receive Kovalevskaia Prize in 2013 and the first prize of Talent in Vietnam 2014 in the category of Medicine and Pharmacy.

Unfortunately, Prof. Dr. Le Thi Luan left when she was too young, when she was participating in three important research topics: inactivated polio vaccine, hand and foot vaccine, multi-price vaccine.

In particular, hand, foot and mouth vaccine due to her directly in charge of research on finished breeding stage, inactivated polio vaccine has passed the pre-clinical stage.