KARACHI, April 4: An estimated 3,600 children die, while another 32,000 to 34,000 develop life-long disability, including blindness, deafness, mental retardation or respiratory problems every year due to Haemophilus influenza type-b (Hib) illnesses in Sindh.
The situation can be averted only by a routine administration of Hib vaccines, which are being used under the childhood immunisation plan by many developed countries.
This was stated by Dr Anita Zaidi, a senior faculty member in paediatrics and microbiology at Aga Khan University. She has recently attended a three-day meeting of leading researchers, reviewing the burden of meningitis and pneumonia, in Bangkok.
Noting that Hib and pneumococcal diseases were two of the major vaccine preventable diseases, which killed about two million children under the age of five across the globe yearly, Dr Zaidi stressed the need for local efforts to measure the scale of the problem and introduction of relevant vaccines under the national immunisation programme.
She said had Pakistan accelerated the introduction of important vaccines against respiratory infections and meningitis, about 195,000 deaths of children due to Hib (severe pneumonia) would have been averted since 1992 when Hib vaccines were introduced. The vaccines are at present utilised by children of higher income groups.
She said that one out of every 350 children born in Pakistan was dying of Hib disease, while thousands of children who did not die are left with life-long disability, with their families bearing the burden of caring for them.
Dr Zaidi maintained that Hib disease was vaccine-preventable and the vaccines had been available in Pakistan for at least a decade, but it is priced so high that only rich families could afford to get their children vaccinated. Administration of three doses of Hib for a complete immunisation against the disease in the first year after birth could cost Rs1,500 to Rs2,000.
Coming to the solution, she said that internationally there had now been a move to shorten the time between the use of a new vaccine in industrialised countries and its introduction in developing countries. The initiative of Global Alliance for Vaccination and Immunisations (GAVI) has finally made it possible for children in Pakistan to get vaccinated against Hib, she added, saying that Pakistan will shortly be approaching the Alliance for introduction of a pentavalent vaccine of DTP-HepB-Hib combination.
Under the scheme she informed that GAVI will ensure provision of over five million injectable vaccines on subsidised price from 2008 onwards. GAVI is also making available other currently expensive vaccines against major childhood killers, like pneumococcal pneumonia and rotavirus diarrhoea to developing countries at less than a dollar per child, she added.
According to a report by The Hib Initiative, Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, in 2006, only 21 per cent of children worldwide received Hib vaccine.
Despite recommendations from the World Health Organisation that Hib vaccine be included in all countries’ routine infant immunisation programmes, many of the developing countries could not adopt the vaccine.
For an acceleration and increase in access to Hib vaccine globally there was a need to address the barriers, including limited awareness and communication about the vaccine, uncertainty about Hib disease burden and concerns about the financial and programmatic impacts of Hib vaccine introduction, Dr Zaidi concluded.
