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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Rotavirus infection: India among 5 nations with high deaths by Aarti Dhar

Rotavirus infection: India among 5 nations with high deaths by Aarti Dhar

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published Published on Oct 27, 2011   modified Modified on Oct 27, 2011

Close to one lakh children below the age of five years died of diarrhoea attributable to rotavirus infection in India in 2008, accounting for 22 per cent of the total deaths reported globally that year, the latest edition of the Lancet Infectious Diseases magazine has reported.

Worldwide in 2008, diarrhoea related to rotavirus infection resulted in 4,53,000 deaths in children younger than 5 years — 37 per cent of deaths attributable to diarrhoea — with five countries accounting for more than half of all deaths attributable to such infection: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria and Pakistan. Introduction of effective and available rotavirus vaccines in other countries, mostly middle-income or poorer, could substantially reduce worldwide deaths attributable to diarrhoea, the paper has suggested.

Systematic review

In this new study, Jacqueline E. Tate and Umesh D Parashar, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., and colleagues did a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies with at least 100 children below five who had been admitted to hospital with diarrhoea. They also included data from countries that participated in the World Health Organisation-coordinated Global Rotavirus Surveillance Network. Studies were classified into one of five groups on the basis of region and the level of child mortality in the country in which the study was done.

The authors note their estimate of deaths due to rotavirus-related diarrhoea in 2008 is somewhat lower than the previous estimate of 5,27,000 deaths in 2004, saying the difference is largely because of an overall decrease in diarrhoea-related deaths in children younger than 5 years — from 1.8 million in 2003 to 1.2 million in 2008. They add: “However, we do not know what proportion of this decrease is due to a true decline in diarrhoea-related mortality and what proportion is due to a change in the methods used to estimate the number of diarrhoea-related deaths.”

Efficacy trials still on

Save the Children, a non-governmental organisation working for children, said that the efficacy trials on the rotaviral vaccines were still on in India and till the trials were over there was little data to prove the efficacy or otherwise of these new vaccines. Secondly, and critically, these patented vaccines are so far being produced by a handful of private pharmaceutical companies and are very expensive. Introducing these vaccines in the public health system will involve huge resources.

The Hindu, 26 October, 2011, http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article2572080.ece


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