COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, February 15 /PRNewswire/ --
- Prevention of Child Deaths Remains an Asian Priority
- Effective Surveillance is First Step to Eliminating Disease
The need for an urgent and sustained effort to document the burden of pneumococcal disease formed the core of discussions amongst leading scientists attending a WHO meeting today. With pneumococcal disease estimated to be responsible for up to one million child deaths each year[1] - local efforts to measure the scale of the problem in Asia are essential in preventing unnecessary child deaths from Streptococcus pneumoniae - a bacterium that causes pneumonia and meningitis.
Serious pneumococcal infections occur throughout life, but young children (especially those under 2 years old) and the elderly are at the highest risk for severe pneumococcal disease. Furthermore, over 90% of pneumococcal pneumonia deaths in children occur in developing countries, and pneumococcal meningitis kills or disables over 40% of the children who get the disease.
“Effective surveillance of pneumococcal disease and its serotypes is needed to accurately map the magnitude of the problem and help evaluate the impact of available vaccines”, commented Dr Thomas Cherian, Co-ordinator a.i., EPI+, Vaccines and Biologicals at WHO.
Pneumococcal disease is a major global health problem, and of concern in Asia. For example, at the Lady Ridgeway Hospital (LRH) for Children in Colombo, Sri Lanka - one of the largest Children’s hospitals in the region - 794 pneumonia cases (32 deaths) and 295 meningitis cases (9 deaths) were reported in 2003[2]. Pneumococcal surveillance, initiated in 2005, indicates that a sizable proportion of these cases could be due to infections by Streptococcus pneumoniae.
Dr. Nihal Abeysinghe, the Chief Epidemiologist of the Ministry of Health, is pleased that Sri Lanka is a part of the South Asian Pneumococcal Alliance (SAPNA) and that pneumococcal surveillance conducted in Sri Lanka is based on sound methodology with high standards of quality control. He also emphasised the value and the importance of technical and financial assistance by WHO and GAVI’s PneumoADIP in supporting and sustaining effective pneumococcal surveillance activities in Sri Lanka.
Dr. Sarath de Silva, the Consultant Paediatrician at the LRH said that the improved Microbiology Laboratory support now provides clinicians with the opportunity to identify pneumococci as a leading cause of meningitis and pneumonia in children. In 2005, Streptococcus pneumoniae were isolated from specimens from 3 meningitis patients and 9 pneumonia patients.
Dr. Kumudu Karunarathne, the Consultant Microbiologist, also at the LRH, commented that a high level of resistant pneumococci to commonly used antibiotics was a very significant finding in 2005. The fact that over 90% of the Streptococcus pneumoniae isolates are resistant to penicillin is of greatest concern, and all clinicians in the country should be aware of this fact.
Fortunately, new vaccines to prevent deadly pneumococcal infections are now available and widely used in many countries in North America and Europe. As Dr. Katharine O’Brien, Deputy Director for Surveillance and Research at GAVI’s PneumoADIP explained: “with systematic surveillance in place and a coordinated effort to introduce pneumococcal vaccines we could save millions of children’s lives and make a significant move towards meeting a key UN Millennium Development Goal of reducing child mortality by two thirds by 2015".
The Pneumococcal Surveillance Investigators meeting was sponsored by the World Health Organisation and GAVI’s PneumoADIP[3] and brought together experts from a number of Asian countries including Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Republic of Korea, Mongolia, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Viet Nam.
The importance placed on this meeting reflects the global community’s increasing focus on pneumococcal disease, and the urgent need for a global solution. Only last week BBC World aired the second in a landmark series of programmes looking at pneumococcal disease and life-saving vaccines. The documentary took a close look at the burden of pneumococcal disease in India and Nepal, and the effort required to introduce a vaccine in developing countries.
Notes to Editors
Pneumococcal Disease
Pneumococcal disease is an infection caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae. When these bacteria invade the lungs, they cause the most common kind of bacterial pneumonia and can then invade the bloodstream (bacteremia) and/or the tissues and fluids surrounding the brain and spinal cord (meningitis).
According to WHO, pneumococcal pneumonia and meningitis are responsible for 800,000 to 1 million child deaths each year and more than 90 percent of pneumococcal pneumonia deaths in children occur in developing countries. Furthermore, approximately 500,000 children die each year from diarrhoeal disease caused by rotavirus, and another 2 million are hospitalized. Since rotavirus diarrhoea is a global infection, nearly every child in the world will suffer an episode of diarrhoea caused by rotavirus before 5 years of age.
South Asian Pneumococcal Alliance (SAPNA)
Sri Lanka became a member of the SAPNA in 2003 and started Laboratory based surveillance of pneumococcal infections in 2005 at the Lady Ridgeway Hospital for Children in Colombo. The Epidemiology Unit of the Ministry of Health coordinates the surveillance activities. It plans to expand surveillance activities to cover the whole Colombo district.
World Health Organisation (WHO)
The World Health Organization is the United Nations specialized agency for health. It was established on 7 April 1948. WHO’s objective, as set out in its Constitution, is the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health. Health is defined in WHO’s Constitution as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.
Pneumococcal Vaccines Accelerated Development and Introduction Plan (PneumoADIP)
The goal of PneumoADIP is to shorten the time between the use of a new vaccine in industrialized countries and its introduction in developing countries by reducing demand uncertainty and achieving an affordable, sustainable supply of vaccines. This novel approach is funded by the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) through its partner the Vaccine Fund. PneumoADIP is located at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The mission of PneumoADIP is to improve child survival and health by accelerating the evaluation of and access to new life saving pneumococcal vaccines for the world’s children. For more information, please visit: www.preventpneumo.org.
GAVI Alliance
The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (now the GAVI Alliance) was launched in 2000 to increase immunization rates and reverse widening global disparities in access to vaccines. Governments in industrialized and developing countries, UNICEF, WHO, the World Bank, non-governmental organizations, foundations, vaccine manufacturers, and public health and research institutions work together as partners in the Alliance, to achieve common immunization goals, in the recognition that only through a strong and united effort can much higher levels of support for global immunization be generated. Funds channeled through GAVI’s financing arm, The GAVI Fund (formerly The Vaccine Fund), are used to help strengthen health and immunization services, accelerate access to selected vaccines and new vaccine technologies - especially vaccines that are new or under-used, and improve injection safety. In addition to substantial funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The Vaccine Fund has been financed by ten governments to date-Canada, Denmark, France, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States- as well as the European Union and private contributors.
[1] World Health Organization. Pneumococcal vaccines. The Weekly Epidemiol Record 2003;14:110-9
[2] Annual Health Bulletin, LRH, 2003
[3] Pneumococcal Vaccines Accelerated Development and Introduction Plan (PneumoADIP) based at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, USA
GAVI’s PneumoADIP
CONTACT: For further, information, please contact: Hans Kvist, Director,Communications, GAVI’s PneumoADIP, Mobile: +1-410-736-8243, Email:hkvist@jhsph.edu, Dr. Ranjith Batuwanthudawe, Principal Investigator, SAPNASri Lanka Project, Epidemiology Unit, Ministry of Health, Tel:+94-112-695112, E-mail: chepid@sltnet.lk Selina Haylock, Consultant, RuderFinn Communications, Mobile: +44-(0)7768-823-989, Email:shaylock@ruderfinn.co.uk
