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India accounts for 22% of global rotavirus-inducted diarrhoea deaths

NEW DELHI: India recorded 98,621 rotavirus-inducted diarrhoea deaths in 2008, which is about 22% of global toll from the infection. Nigeria - the second worst-hit country - recorded about 41,000 deaths, or less than 50% of fatalities as compared to India. Pakistan (39,000) and Bangladesh (9,000) figures among the top 10 worst-affected nations grappling with rotavirus infection, says a study that appeared in medical journal, The Lancet Infectious Diseases. It shows 453,000 deaths occurred due to the infection even though a vaccine was available. About 4.2 lakh (93%) of the total deaths were clustered in the poor countries of Asia and Africa. Less than 0.5% of the deaths occurred in high-income nations, many of whom have adopted universal rotavirus vaccination (URVV) programmes and also had low virus-related mortality. Five countries - Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, and Pakistan - accounted for more than half of all rotavirus-infection induced deaths. India is among the countries, which is yet to introduce a vaccine against rotavirus in its national immunization pogramme, but it is being used in private healthcare sector. The study, conducted by Dr Jacqueline Tate and Dr Umesh D Parashar of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, says, one out of every 260 children born each year will die from diarrhoea caused by rotavirus infection by their fifth birthday. Worldwide in 2008, diarrhoea attributable to rotavirus infection resulted in deaths in 4.5 lakh children younger than five years - 37% of deaths attributable to diarrhoea and 5% of all deaths in children younger than five years. India is in the final stages of developing the first indigenous oral vaccine against rotavirus. The final phase-III confirmatory multi-centre clinical trial on 6,800 children, who are six weeks old, started this year at Society for Applied Studies in the national capital. Punes KEM hospital and Christian Medical College in Vellore are the other two centres.

                                                                                                               
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