Impact of rotavirus vaccine on acute gastroenteritis in children under 5 years in Senegal: Experience of sentinel site of the Albert Royer Children's Hospital in Dakar

Effectiveness of monovalent rotavirus vaccine in the Philippines

Rotavirus (RV) is an important cause of diarrheal disease particularly in children aged under 5 years. Monovalent RV vaccine (RVV) was selectively introduced in 2012 in the Philippines and in July 2014 was introduced in the public health program of a province. Two RVV doses are recommended at 6 and 10 weeks of age. We conducted a test negative case-control evaluation to assess the effectiveness of RVV when given in a routine public health program in the Philippines. From September 2014 to August 2017, 967 children aged <5 years were hospitalized with diarrhea and of these, we enrolled 600 who were eligible to have received RVV and provided stool specimens for testing. Among children ≥8 months of age who were age-eligible to have received RVV, at least one dose of RVV had an adjusted vaccine effectiveness (VE) against RV hospitalization of 60% (95% confidence interval, CI: 24%, 79%), and against severe rotavirus diarrhea, VE was 64% (95% CI: 11%, 85%). These findings support the introduction of RVV into routine public health use in the Philippines. However, other factors such as costs, cost-effectiveness and operational issues must be considered prior to adoption of the vaccine into the countries’ public immunization program.

Impact of rotavirus vaccines in Sub-Saharan African countries

By the end of 2017, 32 (68%) of 47 countries in the World Health Organization's African Region had introduced rotavirus vaccine into their national immunization programs, including 27 countries that received financial support from the Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. Several early introducing African countries previously evaluated the impact, vaccine effectiveness, and/or cost effectiveness of their routine rotavirus vaccination programs and found that rotavirus vaccine was effective and resulted in substantial declines in hospitalizations due to rotavirus. This Special Issue of Vaccine provides additional rotavirus vaccine effectiveness and impact data from a broader range of African countries, describes the longer term impact and potential indirect benefits of rotavirus vaccination programs, describes trends in circulating genotypes in the pre- and post-vaccine introduction eras, and evaluates the cost-effectiveness of a rotavirus vaccination program in a post-introduction setting. As countries begin transitioning from Gavi support, the findings of these studies provide evidence of the impact and effectiveness of rotavirus vaccination programs under conditions of routine use.