A vaccine against pneumonia has proven to be very effective in reducing hospitalizations and death among infants in a rural African setting, investigators report. Finding a way to make the vaccine available “as soon as possible” to children who need it is “extremely important,” Dr. Felicity T. Cutts said in a statement.

In The Lancet this week, her team points out that pneumonia causes roughly 19 percent of the 10 million childhood deaths worldwide each year. Pneumonia rates are up to 10-fold higher in African countries than in industrialized countries, and pneumonia is one of the major causes of death.

For their study in The Gambia, Dr. Cutts, at the Medical Research Council Laboratories in Banju, and her colleagues immunized nearly 8200 infants up to 1 year old with three doses of the vaccine between 2000 and 2003, while a similar number were treated with placebo.

During follow-up until April 2004, the vaccine reduced the first episode of pneumonia diagnosed by chest x-ray by 37 percent and reduced admissions to the hospital by 15 percent. Disease caused by the types of pneumococcus bacteria contained in the vaccine was lowered by 77 percent and overall child mortality by 16 percent. The infants tolerated the vaccine well.

A vaccine against pneumonia is a “valuable intervention to reduce pneumonia, bacteremia, admissions and mortality in African children,” Dr. Cutts and her associates conclude. They suggest that vaccines containing more types of pneumococcus bacteria may be even more effective.

SOURCE: Lancet March 26, 2005.