For parents, why rotavirus vaccine is a must for babies

Posted at 5:16 pm November 17, 2011

Tags: Child Health and Growth

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By Anna Valmero

ANDA, BOHOL— Some 183 babies under six months old were recently immunized against rotavirus, which causes a fatal form of diarrhea that kills young children.

Liza Cardenas, a resident of the fifth-class municipality of Anda, recently brought her four-month-old son Charles for free immunization.

Cardenas admitted she has no knowledge about rotavirus and the danger that it could cause on her baby. She knew of diarrhea but had limited knowledge on its impact to infants and children under the age of two.

Bohol is one of the provinces in the country with the highest incidence of deaths from rotavirus-related diarrhea.

The vaccination was part of efforts to reduce child mortality and achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015, said Dr. Lulu Bravo, executive director of the Philippine Foundation for Vaccination (PFV).

In the Philippines, the rotavirus, which causes severe diarrhea and vomiting, is the number two “killer” of children less than five years old. At least 3,000 Filipino children are affected by rotavirus-related diarrhea each year.

Up to 69 percent of diarrhea cases in the Philippines are caused by rotavirus, according to the Rotavirus – Asia Surveillance Network.

“Rotavirus-related diarrhea accounts for 12 percent of children deaths in the Philippines. That means 13 children die from diarrhea everyday in the country,” said Bravo, who is also the founder of Rotavirus Organization for Training and Advocacy in the Philippines.

According to Bravo, rotavirus is highly contagious and could survive on hands for hours and on solid surfaces for days. Since the rotavirus causes vomiting, oral rehydration is far less effective and could lead to severe dehydration of children.

When a child has diarrhea, it affects his nutrient absorption and this could have a lasting impact on his growth and development. This means that growth shortfalls of up to 8.2 centimeters by seven years old are common among children who had early childhood diarrhea.

Worldwide, some 1,500 children out of 600,000 die everyday because of rotavirus-related diarrhea, according to data from the World Health Organization (WHO).

This is the reason the WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts recommends the inclusion of rotavirus vaccines in all national immunization program.

Pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline, meanwhile, has pitched in together with PFV on a free vaccination project last November.

Mommy Mundo founder and child vaccination advocate Janice Villanueva said that before 2010, the Philippines did not include rotavirus vaccines on its list so she tapped PFV and GlaxoSmithKline for the free vaccination project.

She lauded the Department of Health (DoH) for including rotavirus recently in the expanded program for immunization to be implemented in the next two years.

Improved sanitation and clean water cannot prevent the rotavirus from affecting children so first-world countries such as Australia, United States, Spain and United Kingdom still account for half of the total cases of rotavirus infections worldwide.

“Diarrhea caused by rotavirus is fatal but preventable. It just means that vaccination is still the first line of defense against rotavirus that we can give our children particularly between six months to two years of age,” Villanueva said.