Geneva, 5 June. – (ANA) - The World Health Organization (WHO) has recommended that rotavirus vaccination be included in all national immunization programmes in order to provide protection against a virus that is responsible for more than 500,000 diarrheal deaths and two million hospitalizations annually among children. More than 85 percent of these deaths occur in developing countries in Africa and Asia. This new policy will help ensure access to rotavirus vaccines in the world’s poorest countries.
The new recommendation by the WHO's Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE), extends an earlier recommendation made in 2005 on vaccination in the Americas and Europe, where clinical trials had demonstrated safety and efficacy in low and intermediate mortality populations. New data from clinical trials which evaluated vaccine efficacy in countries with high child mortality has led to the recommendation for global use of the vaccine. This is reported in the Weekly Epidemiological Review published on June 5, 2009.
“This is a tremendous milestone in ensuring that vaccines against the most common cause of lethal diarrhea reach the children who need them most,” noted Dr. Thomas Cherian, Coordinator of the Expanded Programme on Immunization, WHO Department of Immunization, Vaccines, and Biologicals.
“This WHO recommendation clears the way for vaccines that will protect children in the developing world from one of the most deadly diseases they face," said Dr. Tachi Yamada, President of the Global Health Program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “We need to act now to deliver vaccines to children in Africa and Asia, where most rotavirus deaths occur.”
The GAVI Alliance, vaccine manufacturers, and the public health community made an unprecedented commitment to understand how these vaccines would work in developing-world conditions. The clinical trial, funded in part by GAVI and conducted by PATH, WHO, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), and research institutions in high-mortality, low-socioeconomic settings of South Africa and Malawi, found that the vaccine significantly reduced severe diarrhea episodes due to rotavirus.
In 2006, the GAVI Alliance added rotavirus vaccines to its portfolio of vaccines for which it provides financial support to developing countries, underscoring GAVI’s commitment to reduce the traditional 15 to 20 year lag between the introduction of new vaccines in wealthy countries and their availability in the developing world. Today, WHO’s global recommendation paves the way for low-income countries in Africa and Asia to apply to GAVI for introduction of rotavirus vaccines— just three years after new rotavirus vaccines became available in the US, Europe, and Latin America.
Because oral vaccines can have variable efficacy in different populations, it was important to demonstrate vaccine performance in high-mortality settings. The studies in Africa were conducted among populations with high infant and child mortality, poor sanitary conditions, high diarrheal disease mortality and high maternal HIV prevalence.
WHO, UNICEF, and other GAVI partners are working together in a new accelerated and integrated approach to combat rotavirus diarrhea and pneumonia, the two biggest vaccine-preventable diseases which together account for more than 35 percent of all child deaths each year, the majority of which are in the developing world. (ANA)
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