MOSCOW, March 21. /TASS/. Moscow is ready to be one of the first regions in Russia to use a new vaccine against tuberculosis, which is currently undergoing clinical trials, Yelena Bogorodskaya, Deputy Head of the Moscow City Health Department, told reporters on Thursday answering a question from TASS.

"The trials of the new vaccine take a lot of time," she noted, pointing out that it is "unlikely that the vaccine will be available in the immediate future, but, as soon as it appears, Moscow will be one of the first regions to use it," the health official vowed.

Russia’s First Deputy Health Minister Tatyana Yakovleva earlier told reporters at a TASS news conference that a new TB vaccine for adults was currently at the stage of clinical trials, and its creation could be completed in 2019. She explained that the new vaccine was being developed by specialists from the Gamaley National Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology.

According to the World Health Organization, 10 million people are diagnosed with tuberculosis around the globe annually, one in ten of them are children. Tuberculosis remains one of the world’s most dominant infectious diseases, claiming almost 4,400 lives every day. According to Russia’s consumer watchdog, more than 61,500 people were diagnosed with TB in 2018, which is 7.7% less than in 2017.