New pneumococcal vaccine to be introduced in next year

The new vaccine to cure the fatal disease of pneumonia in children of under five years of age will be introduced in the country in March next year, said Dr Altaf Hussain Bosan, manager national programme on immunisation on Saturday. Briefing media about the vaccine here at National Institute of Health (NIH), he said that new pneumococcal vaccine would help prevent 65 percent of the pneumonia cases in Pakistan.
He said "for the purpose the government had successfully secured a support worth of approximately 680 million US dollars from the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI) for a period of five years adding that $19 million would be contributed by the government of Pakistan. The vaccine will be available all over the country as part of free immunisation services for children," he added.
He said for the first time in history vaccines against the leading cause of pneumonia were reaching children in developing countries at nearly the same time they arrive at children in high-income countries. "This is unprecedented. In the past, it took up to ten to fifteen years for a vaccine that was introduced in high-income countries to reach in developing countries. But thanks to GAVI Alliance partners this gap has been significantly reduced," he said.
Bosan said the World Pneumonia Day was an opportunity to highlight the power of vaccines to prevent millions of child deaths and to celebrate the historic achievements of the rapid rollout of new pneumococcal vaccines. "No child should die of a disease we can prevent. On this Day we stand with our partners in the global community and pledge that we will do everything possible to defeat this scourge to provide healthier, happier and brighter future to our people," he said.
Every 20 seconds, pneumonia takes the life of a child. It takes the lives of over 1.5 million children every year more than any other cause of death. Hence it is the biggest killer of children under the age of five years in developing countries. Around 98.5 percent of these deaths are in developing countries.