According to an article published in Science, impact evaluaion of global health programs is becoming more stringent [1]. he Center for Global Development in Washington is demanding ard evidence in real-life field conditions, whether interventions ave directly led to lower numbers of cases or deaths and whether he improvements are sufficient to justify the costs. In this milieu e find some of th...

DNA vaccines are usually given by intramuscular injection or by gene gun delivery of DNA-coated particles into the epidermis. Induction of mucosal immunity by targeting DNA vaccines to mucosal surfaces may offer advantages, and an oral vaccine could be effective for controlling infections of the gut mucosa. In a murine model, we obtained protective immune responses after oral immunization with ...

BACKGROUND Rotavirus gastroenteritis is the leading cause of diarrheal disease mortality among children under five, resulting in 450,000 to 700,000 deaths each year, and another 2 million hospitalizations, mostly in the developing world. Nearly every child in the world is infected with rotavirus at least once before they are five years old. Vaccines to prevent rotavirus or minimize its severity...

Background WHO recommends routine use of rotavirus vaccines in all countries, particularly in those with high mortality attributable to diarrhoeal diseases. To establish the burden of life-threatening rotavirus disease before the introduction of a rotavirus vaccine, we aimed to update the estimated number of deaths worldwide in children younger than 5 years due to diarrhoea attributable to rota...

BACKGROUND Approximately 39% of the global diarrhoea deaths in children aged 5 years may be attributable to rotavirus infection. Two rotavirus vaccines were recently introduced to the market, with evidence of efficacy in the USA, Europe and Latin America. We sought to estimate the effectiveness of these vaccines against rotavirus morbidity and mortality. METHODS We conducted a systematic revi...

BACKGROUND A phased introduction of a monovalent rotavirus vaccine occurred in Mexico from February 2006 through May 2007. We assessed the effect of vaccination on deaths from diarrhea in Mexican children in 2008 and 2009. METHODS We obtained data on deaths from diarrhea, regardless of cause, from January 2003 through May 2009 in Mexican children under 5 years of age. We compared diarrhea-rel...

BACKGROUND Published economic assessments of rotavirus vaccination typically use modelling, mainly static Markov cohort models with birth cohorts followed up to the age of 5 years. Rotavirus vaccination has now been available for several years in some countries, and data have been collected to evaluate the real-world impact of vaccination on rotavirus hospitalisations. This study compared the e...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the effect of abstention from breastfeeding, for an hour before and after each vaccination, on the immune responses of infants to two doses of rotavirus vaccine. METHODS In Soweto, South Africa, mother-infant pairs who were uninfected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) were enrolled as they presented for the "6-week" immunizations of the infants. Each infant was ...

BACKGROUND Rotaviruses are the most important cause of severe acute gastroenteritis worldwide in children <5 years of age. The human, G1P[8] rotavirus vaccine Rotarix™ significantly reduced severe rotavirus gastroenteritis episodes in a Phase III clinical trial conducted in infants in South Africa and Malawi. This paper examines rotavirus vaccine efficacy in preventing severe rotavirus gastroen...

The recent introduction of a rotavirus vaccine program in Mexico to control rotavirus disease, a common killer of children worldwide, has dramatically reduced the number of Mexican children dying and being hospitalized because of diarrhea. The successful introduction of a rotavirus vaccine program was preceded by several decades of focused research efforts to document the burden of disease and ...