24 January 2012 MINISTER of Community Development, Mother and Child Health, Joseph Katema yesterday administered the first dose of rotavirus vaccine against diarrhoea in children under the age of five at Chawama Hospital in Lusaka. About 15 000 children die from diarrhoea-related causes and almost a third of these were due to rotavirus with more than 10 million episodes of diarrhoea recorded in the country and 840 visits to a health facility each year. The first dose would be given to children between six to 14 weeks old and the second at least four weeks after or before 24 weeks. Dr Katema said to achieve better health, all interventions that were already known such as access to clean and safe drinking water and infrastructure should be sustained and called on mothers in Lusaka where the vaccine had been piloted to continue maintaining high levels of hygiene even with the rotavirus vaccine available. “I am calling on mothers to stick to already existing interventions in diarrhea prevention such as washing hands, chlorinating drinking water and maintaining proper sanitation even with the first vaccine available,” he said. He said the Government, through his ministry, would examine the gaps in failure to reduce mortality rates and would do so through interventions that was community based, comprehensive and integrated. Such interventions would be simple for the community to understand and adhere to and would be sustainable because it was the correct way to go. Dr Katema said Lusaka had been chosen as a pilot study for rotavirus vaccine because it was the most populated district, so it would be easy to assess the impact of the programme. CIDRZ in partnership with Absolute Return for Kids (ARK) would roll out the programme in Lusaka District and vaccinate about 84,000 infants by the end of this year before spreading to other parts of the country next year. Be the first to Write a Comment ! More News on allAfrica.com Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feed | Amazon WordPress Plugin | Android Forum | Hud Software

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Minister Administers First Rotavirus Dose

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