Studies Back Rollout of New Baby Vaccine

The Star
Mar 4, 2009
By Louise Flanagan

April 1 marks start of SA's war on deadly pneumococcal disease.

Two new studies released yesterday underlined the urgent need for children to be vaccinated against pneumococcal disease - a year after South Africa first promised to offer the vaccine.

The studies "highlight the increased risk for children in Africa of contracting pneumococcal disease and suffering its devastating consequences", said the Pneumococcal Awareness Council of Experts (PACE), which announced the results in Sandton yesterday. PACE is a global project of the non-profit Sabin Vaccine Institute.

The Pace experts welcomed SA's promise to introduce the vaccine for pneumococcal disease, which made it the first country in Africa to do this.

Last May, then Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang announced in Geneva that the vaccines Prevnar and Rotarix would be made available to South African children. Prevnar inoculates against pneumococcal disease and Rotarix against Rotavirus diarrhoea, another childhood killer.

However the vaccines are still not being distributed by state facilities.

Gauteng Health Department spokesperson Phumelele Kaunda said yesterday that both would be available from next month. "It's April 1 for both of them," she said.

Pneumococcal disease is a bacterial infection that causes pneumonia, meningitis, sepsis and other life-threatening ailments. Each year it kills 1.6 million people, half of them children under 5.

It affects people of all ages, but particularly infants, the elderly and those with weak immune systems or chronic illnesses.

The new PACE studies show that sickle cell disease, common in many parts of Africa, increases the risk of pneumonia by a factor of 37. Together with HIV infection, malnutrition and indoor air pollution, this puts African children at high risk,” PACE said.

“Even when treated with antibiotics in a hospital, up to half of all children in Africa who get pneumococcal meningitis will either die or become disabled as a consequence of the disease.”

The PACE experts said vaccinating children protected not just them but others around them such as HIV-infected adults with compromised immune systems.

The vaccination is given to babies on a three-dose schedule at six weeks, 14 weeks and nine months.

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