Top Six Vaccine-Preventable Diseases Still Deadly to Children
How do US figures on child mortality from vaccine preventable diseases compare with global stats? Update here, plus a brief review of vaccine efficacy.
Across the globe, more than 100 million children per year now are immunized against vaccine-preventable diseases. But 6 of these infections still claim hundreds of thousands of lives, most of them children before the age of 5. Deaths from hepatitis B are usually in adults, but most had contracted the infection in early life when infection is much more likely to result in chronic disease.
Can you rank these 6 still-deadly diseases from highest to lowest in terms of number of deaths?
♦ Diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis combined
♦ Hepatitis B
♦ Influenza
♦ Measles
♦ Pneumococcus
♦ Rotavirus
Click on the titles below for the next articles in the Patient Care Pediatric Vaccines Special Report:
Measles: When to say NO to MMR Vaccine
Quadracel Approved: Take the PI Test
References:
WHO, UNICEF, World Bank. State of the world’s vaccines and immunization, 3rd ed. Geneva, World Health Organization, 2009. http://www.unicef.org/media/files/SOWVI_full_report_english_LR1.pdf
