Red flag for the runs

After drug controllers in numerous countries, the WHO has also given its approval to the diarrhoea vaccine

This should come as good news for parents who have to deal with infants and children suffering from the runs. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has given its nod to a vaccine that builds immunity against the diarrhoea-causing rotavirus. Though the vaccine has been available via retail in many Western countries and even in India, this announcement is significant because aid programmes around the world which undertake immunisation of children can now include this vaccine.

The rotavirus is a relatively recent discovery. It was isolated in 1973, and soon the WHO found that it was responsible for more than 500,000 diarrhoeal deaths and two million hospitalisations a year among children. Thus, the agency justifies its approval for a vaccine to combat the virus. It is said that by the age of five nearly every child in the world has been infected with the rotavirus at least once. But with each infection immunity develops, and subsequent infections are less severe. Adults are said to rarely be affected.

A vaccine for the rotavirus was ready for clinical trials in 1998. Trials in the USA, Finland and Venezuela found it to be 80-100 per cent effective at preventing severe diarrhoea and, even better, researchers detected no “statistically significant serious adverse effects”. The WHO's Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) made its recommendations in the wake of new data from fresh clinical trials done in 2006.

The vaccine is available from two pharma majors — GlaxoSmithKline and Merck. The former calls it Rotarix and the latter RotaTeq. Both are taken orally and contain disabled live virus. Both companies are expected to reap the benefits of the WHO nod. But there is already controversy, because the UK agency that recommends vaccines to the UK’s National Health Service has said the vaccines are “too costly”, and the US Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation has said it would only consider recommending the vaccine if its price was significantly reduced. Aid agencies, though, say that, notwithstanding the cost, the vaccine is a boon for areas like Africa.

But the WHO has said in a footnote that other causative factors for diarrhoea remain. It is also important to improve water quality, hygiene and sanitation, and to ensure that oral rehydration solutions and zinc supplements are available.