Field workers from the Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Programme recruit participants for the pneumococcal vaccine study in Blantyre. Field workers recruit participants for the pneumococcal vaccine study in Blantyre. Credit: Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Programme.
Field workers from the Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Programme recruit participants for the pneumococcal vaccine study in Blantyre. Field workers recruit participants for the pneumococcal vaccine study in Blantyre. Credit: Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Programme. Offering a booster dose or changing the vaccination schedule available to infants in sub-Saharan Africa could greatly reduce the risk of them contracting potentially fatal diseases such as pneumonia, sepsis and meningitis, a UCL-led study has found. Research led by UCL in partnership with the University of Liverpool (UoL), the Malawi Ministry of Health, and the Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Programme (MLW), has shown that the current pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV) schedule in Malawi - as offered in many other lowand middle-income countries (LMICs) - does not provide sustained immunity for children against the pneumococcus bacteria after their first year of life. The team's findings, published in Lancet Infectious Diseases (Lancet ID), highlight the need to review pneumococcal vaccine strategies in countries throughout the world, to sustain vaccine-induced antibody levels and control the spread of disease. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that more than 300,000 children aged under five die of pneumococcal disease every year, with the greatest burden among those in LMICs.
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