Introduction of rotavirus vaccine

doi:10.1136/bmj.b3482

Published 25 September 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b3482
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;339:b3482

Editorials

Introduction of rotavirus vaccine

Getting it to communities at highest risk of mortality fromdiarrhoeal disease is the greatest challenge

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Diarrhoeal disease causes around 17% of deaths in children under5 years worldwide.¹ Hence, effective interventions are crucialto reaching the fourth millennium development goal of reducingmortality by two thirds in children under 5 between 1990 and2015.² Oral rehydration therapy is a highly cost effective interventionand has been described as one of the most important public healthadvances of the 20th century. A packet of oral rehydration saltscosts only a few cents. However, because of a breakdown of healthservices in some of the world’s poorest communities, itsuse is not expanding and is actually falling in some countries.As a result, children are still dying from this curable disease.

Rotavirus causes about a third of diarrhoea related mortalityworldwide.³ The linked study by Rose and colleagues (doi:10.1136/bmj.b3653)shows that although a newly licensed oral rotavirus vaccineis considered to be cost effective in . . . [Full text of this article]

U K Griffiths, lecturer in health economics , A D Clark, research fellow in mathematical modelling, K M Mulholland, professor of child health and epidemiology

¹ London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London WC1E 7HT

ulla.griffiths@lshtm.ac.uk

CiteULike

Complore

Connotea

Del.icio.us Add to Digg

Digg

StumbleUpon Add to Technorati

Technorati What's this?

Relevant Article

Public health impact and cost effectiveness of mass vaccination with live attenuated human rotavirus vaccine (RIX4414) in India: model based analysis: Johnie Rose, Rachael L Hawthorn, Brook Watts, and Mendel E Singer
BMJ 2009 339: b3653. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]