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THE SMART NEWS SOURCE | Nov 21 2009 14:54 | LAST UPDATED Nov 21 2009 14:54 |
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Thousands of South Africa's poorer children will be saved from death by dehydration or suffocation when vaccines against two of the biggest childhood diseases become available in the public sector next month. The Eastern Cape is due to start providing children with pneumococcal conjugate (PCV-7) and the RotaTeq vaccines from September. From April next year the vaccines will be added to the government's childhood vaccination schedule, according to Biovac, the public-private partnership set up to facilitate use of vaccines in South Africa. PCV-7 protects children against pneumococcal disease caused by the pneumococcus bacterium, globally the major vaccine-preventable cause of death among young children. The RotaTeq vaccine tackles the rotavirus, which causes a diarrhoeal disease thought to affect almost every child on the globe before the age of three. Respiratory and diarrhoeal disease are the two biggest killers of children worldwide. Morena Makohana, deputy chief executive of Biovac, said South Africa will be the first African country to purchase these two vaccines for national distribution. "It's exciting; more vaccines means more lives are going to be saved." Both vaccines have been available to South Africans who could afford them for some time, but their prohibitive cost has kept them out of the public sector. RotaTeq was registered for use in the United States in 2000 and the PCV-7 in 2006. Key to the government's decision to provide the vaccines will be a lower price, but Wyeth, which owns the pneumococcal vaccine, and Merck, which has the RotaTeq vaccine, are coy about the price. It is estimated that about 600 000 children die worldwide every year from dehydration as a result of vomiting and diarrhoea caused by rotavirus, and close to two million are hospitalised. A further two million children die each year as a result of pneumonia, which directly accounts for about 20% of paediatric deaths. Children living with HIV are vulnerable to the disease and other infections caused by pneumococcus.  CONTINUES BELOW The PCV-7 vaccine works in HIV-infected children, although it is less effective. One difficulty is diagnosing the cause of pneumonia in children and the best way to treat it. Using a vaccine against the pneumococcus will remove one of the potential causes, making detection of the underlying pathogen easier and cheaper. It will also curb the spread of the disease and cut transmission of drug-resistant pathogens caused by inadequate treatment. The impact of the vaccines will also be felt by adults. "You vaccinate the small ones, but the ripple effect goes through to the older people," said Makohana. Vaccinating enough children leads to "herd immunity", where even those who are not vaccinated will not contract the disease. Harvard professor David Bloom, who gave lectures in South Africa on the economic benefits of vaccination this month, said that preventable diseases are a drag on the economy. Bloom said vaccination should be seen "not just as a cost but as an economic generating investment". Rather than just using moral, legal or social reasons to mobilise governments into extending vaccination programmes, policymakers should also use economic arguments. The wider benefits also include the avoided costs of illness and death, as well as improved productivity for parents who do not have to care for sick children. Developmental benefits should also be counted because neurological, cognitive and physical impairment caused by childhood diseases cut children's potential productivity by reducing their ability to learn. A problem for policymakers, who may have a relatively short political life-expectancy, is that vaccine costs are upfront, while the benefits happen down the line. "Policymakers find the additional costs of new vaccines quite daunting. Vaccine programmes are difficult to cost, but the alternative is likely to be even more costly," said Bloom. TOPICS IN THIS ARTICLE
Comments
This is just another way to eliminate Africa's poorer children. What these children need is better nutrition, sanitation, and overall better living conditions; what they don't need is enormous doses of dangerous toxins injected into their bodies. Please do some research regarding the dangers and truth about vaccines. These innocent children do not deserve this.
Reign Phoenix on August 27, 2008, 12:23 pm
Having studied infectious diseases and pathology, amongst other subjects, at a tertiary level of education I can safely say that vaccines are good, not bad. The government and the evil pharmaceutical corporations are not in cahoots to kill off Africas future generations using vaccines, that would seem a rather ingenious waste of money actually, because that is what rotavirus infections do via massive dehydration, for free nogal. If you want a case in point of how useless vaccines really are look at what smallpox did to humanity before it was eradicated in the 1970's, using widespread vaccination campaigns, or for a more recent example Nigeria. Nigeria decided, after some shady practices by one foreign pharmaceutical company, that polio vaccines were going to sterilise and or transmit HIV to their people, not surprisingly they opted to end their polio vaccine programme. Fast forward a few years and you'll see Nigeria has the dubious honour of being on the list of countries where polio is now endemic. What a triumph for anti-imperialist thinking. If the vaccines are proven to be safe they should be used. Reign Phoenix is correct that better living conditions are necessary for the majority of South Africans, most unfortunately that is no guarantee that you won't contract a strep or rotavirus infection, ergo vaccinate and build up our populations immunity.Preventions are more effective than cures . Please check out either medline or science-direct for more information, don't take some unsubstantiated claims on websites word, or mine for that matter. For general information ask a qualified medical practitioner.
Michael Boswell on August 27, 2008, 5:22 pm
Right you are, Michael. It is important that people see the benefits of vaccination. It is also important that such unfounded opposition be met with due resistance, lest the general public, who stand to gain (and not lose) from vaccination, fall into the trap of refusing a potentially life-saving inoculation.
Yasin Gamieldien on August 29, 2008, 10:46 pm
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