Fed: New vaccine could slash grommets, antibiotics

AAP General News (Australia)
08-03-2000
Fed: New vaccine could slash grommets, antibiotics

A vaccine against the bug which causes middle ear infection and pneumonia is likely
to become available next year and could slash grommet surgery and antibiotics' costs.

Professor TERRY NOLAN, head of epidemiology and biostatistics at Melbourne's Murdoch
Children's Research Institute, says the vaccine could also reduce the burden of deafness
and disease borne by Aboriginal people.

He's told the Public Health Association of Australia national immunisation conference
that an average of five Australian children under the age of five die annually from disease
caused by the bug in Australia.

In central Australia, the rate of invasive disease from the pneumococcal bug, including
meningitis and septicaemia, is the highest in the world at more than 2,000 cases per 100,000
population.

Among the Pitjantjara people, 85 per cent of babies by the age of 12 months have perforated
ear drums because of it.

Prof NOLAN says a US trial on the vaccine has found that it cut by 20 per cent the
number of operations to insert grommets, or tubes, into the ear and also reduced antibiotic
prescriptions by five per cent.

However, the vaccine is very expensive, and at around $400 for the primary course is
more than all the other vaccines in the schedule put together.

AAP RTV rr/jhm/dmc/jn

KEYWORD: EAR (GOLD COAST)

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