Introduction of rotavirus vaccine Getting it to communities at highest risk of mortality from diarrhoeal disease is the greatest challenge

摘要

Diarrhoeal disease causes around 17% of deaths in children under 5 years worldwide.1 Hence, effective interventions are crucial to reaching the fourth millennium development goal of reducing mortality by two thirds in children under 5 between 1990 and 2015.2 Oral rehy-dration therdpy is a highly cost effective intervention and has been described as one of the most important public health advances of the 20th century. A packet of oral rehydration salts costs only a few cents. However, because of a breakdown of health services in some of the world's poorest communities, its use is not expanding and is actually falling in some countries. As a result, children are still dying from this curable disease.