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Hope for thousands of babies in the prevention of rotavirus infection
Vaccine for diarrhoea
A child dies every minute of a rotavirus infection, with a majority of the deaths occurring in the Indian subcontinent, sub-Saharan Africa and South America.
Rotavirus causes about 125 million episodes of gastroenteritis resulting in about 440,000 deaths worldwide every year.

Watery diarrhoea up to about 12 times a day, severe vomiting, irritability, lethargy, fever are the devastating symptoms suffered by children, including babies once infected.

These are the shocking statistics along with hope for millions of children across the globe, announced at a media briefing held in early March in Cebu City, in the Philippines, during the Third Asian Congress of Paediatric Diseases.
The hope lies in an oral vaccine, Rotarix produced by GlaxoSmithKline, to combat not only this killer disease but also prevent the untold suffering parents and children undergo.

Talking of the agony she herself underwent when her little grandson who was fine one morning was wracked by bouts of diarrhoea and vomiting due to rotavirus a few hours later, Dr. Lulu Bravo of the Department of Paediatrics, University of Philippines quoting the World Health Organisation (WHO) said, “Rotavirus vaccines would be the best strategy for disease prevention.”
While improvement in general hygiene and sanitation standards and washing hands are to be encouraged, Dr. Bravo, Professor and Chief of Infectious Tropical Diseases, said they do not effectively reduce the incidence of rotavirus.

Dealing with how the virus is transmitted, she explained that the faecal-oral route is the predominant way the infection spreads. (See graphic)
Consultant Paediatrician Prof. S. Lamabadasuriya, also present at the media conference, said that in Sri Lanka specific tests for rotavirus in diarrhoea infections were not ordered by doctors, because it would be too costly for the parents. “We just do a full report on the stools and if there are pus and red cells, come to the conclusion that it is a bacterial infection, if not that it is a viral infection.”

Referring to the new oral vaccine, Prof. Timo Vesikari of the University of Tampere in Finland, dubbed the crusader against rotavirus, said, “It mimics the immune response to a natural rotavirus infection, protects against moderate and severe disease and prevents hospitalisation and death.”
This vaccine developed from a single human strain and not an artificial one is live and attenuated, he said. It mimics the infection without causing the disease.

The vaccine is shown to provide broad protection against multiple rotavirus strains of human origin, he stressed, adding that 33 licences have been granted worldwide for Rotarix. “It is available in the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.”

When questioned about the possibility of intussusception occurring after vaccination, Prof. Vesikari said no safety issues were identified during the trials, and there were no increased risks of intussusception in the “vaccine group” compared to the “placebo group”.

Intussusception is a condition where one portion of the bowel slides into the next, much like the pieces of a telescope. When this occurs, it creates an obstruction in the bowel, with the walls of the intestines pressing against one another. This, in turn, leads to swelling, inflammation, and decreased blood flow to the intestines involved and can cause death, if not detected in time. An earlier vaccine was withdrawn in America after it was reported that this vaccine was associated with intussusception.

Recommending that the oral vaccine Rotarix should ideally be administered to babies between six weeks and six months and not after that he said: “The vaccine would help deal with rotavirus which is very ‘democratic’ because it affects both rich and poor and most infants irrespective of their social standing would be vulnerable to it.

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