The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) will make up to US$ 90 million (EUR 92 million) available in the coming three years for vaccine development for pneumococcus and rotavirus. Rotavirus, an intestinal infection, is the leading cause of severe diarrhoea in young children, killing more than 600,000 each year, mostly in developing countries. GAVI's aim is to vaccinate 30 million children per year against rotavirus between 2006 and 2012. An earlier vaccine, RotaShield, was pulled off the market in 1999, after side-effects (bowel obstruction) killed 20 infants in the USA. Drug companies Merck ( http://www.merck.com) and GlaxoSmithKline ( http://corp.gsk.com), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), USA, are already conducting field trials to test new rotavirus vaccines. GlaxoSmithKline is concentrating its efforts in Latin America, while CDC is conducting clinical trials on an oral rotavirus vaccine for India, together with a local company, Bharat Biotech International (BBI) and several other partners. The CDC project is part of the Indo-US Vaccine Action Programme (VAP).

Related news: Handwashing: Soap and Water Could Save a Million Lives a Year, Source, 15 Jul 2002, http://www.wsscc.org/source/weekly/02278.html#ha...

Related website: Rotavirus vaccine / WHO, http://www.who.int/vaccines/en/rotavirus.shtml ; Infection disease information - rotavirus / CDC, http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/diseases/submenus/sub_...

Contact: Contact: Lisa Jacobs, GAVI Secretariat, c/o UNICEF, Switzerland, fax: +41-22-9095931, Gavi@unicef.org, http://www.vaccinealliance.org ; Dr Roger Glass, CDC Viral Gastroenteritis Unit (G04), USA, fax: +1-404-6393645, rig2@cdc.gov

Source: Immunization Focus, Jul 2002
AP / Herald Sun, 8 Jul 2002
Business Line, 15 Apr 2002