University of Otago's Prof Philip Hill reflects on a new
study that highlights the likely benefits of vaccinating
African children against pneumonia-related disease. Photo
by Linda Robertson.
Vaccinating children in Africa may protect their entire
communities from pneumonia-related disease, a new study
co-authored by Prof Philip Hill, of the University of Otago,
suggests.
Invasive pneumococcal disease can strike at all ages but
affects the young most severely, annually killing an
estimated 800,000 children aged under 5 worldwide through
illnesses such as pneumonia, blood infection and meningitis.
Prof Hill was born in Dunedin and is an Auckland University
medical graduate.
He undertook bacterial disease research at the United
Kingdom's Medical Research Council Unit in Gambia, West
Africa, from 2001 to 2007, before becoming the first director
of the Otago Centre for International Health in 2008.
Prof Hill had co-ordinated field work involving pneumococcal
bacteria research focusing on 5000 villagers in 21 villages
in rural Gambia, in association with MRC Unit colleagues.
Results of the just-published randomised controlled trial
showed vaccinating young children with PCV-7 vaccine reduced
carriage in the nose of the types of pneumococcal bacteria
the vaccine targeted, not only in the vaccinated children,
but also in vaccinated and non-vaccinated older children and
adults.
Prof Hill is excited with the results.
There had previously been concerns that achieving this kind
of wider "herd effect" through immunising infants against
pneumococcus, the bacterium which causes the disease, would
be much more difficult in Africa than elsewhere.
"We have now shown for the first time that, despite the
greater prevalence of pneumococcal carriage and a high level
of infection transmission compared with other parts of the
world, it may be feasible to protect entire communities in
Africa from pneumococcal disease through vaccinating young
children alone," he said.
The study, just published in international journal PLoS
Medicine, also showed that vaccinating whole communities
did not result in a community-wide increase in carriage of
other types of pneumococci not included in the vaccine, in
the two years after vaccination.
The study was led by MRC Unit researchers in collaboration
with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
This unit recently received a $US7 million grant ($NZ8.8
million) over four years from the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation to support further vaccine-effectiveness research
in Gambia.
Dr Grant Mackenzie is the project's principal investigator.
The research will also involve Prof Hill as a
co-investigator, and some postgraduate students from the
Otago centre are also likely to take part.
- john.gibb@odt.co.nz
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