Efforts to Get Medicine To Poor Children Falter

One vaccine, which protects against a life-threatening form of pneumonia, has been available to children in the United States for five years and has had a dramatic impact on disease here. The other, a vaccine that protects against a deadly form of diarrhea, is poised for a rollout soon among middle-income countries in Latin America.
*
*
*
But the efforts have faltered amid a dizzying array of snafus, misjudgments and business difficulties. One company cannot produce enough vaccine, and studies needed to support widespread use of another have been slowed by behind-the-scenes squabbling. The problems have proved so vexing that the vaccines are expected to take an additional three to five years to reach the poorest villages.
*
*
*
Most people have never heard of rotavirus, but every child in the world contracts it early in life. In such places as the United States, some children are hospitalized with rotavirus diarrhea, but they get good care and do not die. In countries with poor health systems, children often progress to catastrophic dehydration and an estimated 440,000 die of rotavirus every year.
*
*
*
Some public-health doctors, although regretting that the original goal will not be met, urged a sense of perspective, noting that the vaccine might reach poor children just a few years after it reaches those in rich countries. “If we can cut the lag time from 30 years to a decade or less, that’s 20 years of lives saved,” said Nils Daulaire, president of the Global Health Council, an advocacy group in White River Junction, Vt.

The sentiment, however valid, is a measure of the degree to which the public-health world has become accustomed to death on a mass scale.

Click here for link.