How to save 10 million children a year

Press, 17 February 1983, Page 21

How to save 10 million children a year

From

MICHAEL DAVIE

in La Jolla

• Millions of children's lives could be saved every year if recent advances in the techniques of health care were appli.ed worldwide.

• Saving the children’s lives would slow down the world’s rapid population growth. These two propositions will be the basis of a new, high-powered international committee being formed by Dr Jonas Salk and Robert McNamara.

Dr Salk is the founding director of the Salk Institute and the man responsible for the Salk polio vaccine. Mr McNamara is the recently retired president of the World Bank and a former United States Secretary for Defence.

In the developing world, one out of every two children dies before the age' of five. Ten million children a year

perish from six childhood diseases and diarrheal dehydration. Tens of millions more who contract but do not die of the diseases are left permanently weakened or crippled.

Dr Salk and Mr McNamara say that this state of affairs need no longer persist. For the first time in human history, the means are at hand to change it. Dr Salk explains that recent advances in medical technology make it feasible, as well as desirable, to carry out universal immunisation against the diseases mainly responsible for the death of infants. “It sounds impossible but it is entirely possible," he said in an interview last week at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies at La Jolla, California. And, according to James Grant, executive director of • the United Nations Children’s Fund, a simple and effective cure is also available for diarrheal dehydration, which

kills some five million children a year. Mass immunisation, together with the cure for diarrheal dehydration, makes possible a revolution in the world’s health, Mr Grant says.

“About 120 million children are born each year,” Dr Salk says. “Eighty million are born in the, developing world. Of these, only some 20 million receive any health care.”

The technical obstacles that hitherto stood in the way of giving all these children protection against childhood diseases, by vaccination, have now been overcome. First, it used to be too

expensive to produce vaccines in large quantities. This is no longer true. A more refined and potent polio vaccine, for example, is being produced industrially on a large scale in Lyons, France. “The method is efficient and economical, and the vaccine is of reliable quality,” Dr Salk adds.

The new technology was developed jointly by Dutch and French scientists. Originally, polio vaccine required monkeys. Now it is being produced by means of a continuously propagating cell. Monkeys are no longer needed.

Second, polio vaccine can now be combined with D.P.T.

in one syringe. D.P.T. stands for diptheria, tetanus, and pertussis (whooping cough). Third, new techniques have made vaccines more effective. In the rural areas where immunisation programmes are needed, the children are widely scattered. It has been hard to ensure that a child gets the required number of shots at the required intervals, so immunisation has been a very complicated administrative business. Even in places with immunisation programmes, coverage has been patchy. But it has now been demonstrated that fewer vaccine shots are needed. A programme whereby each child is given only two injections. at intervals of four to six months, has proved as "efficacious" as the old mul-

tiple-shot system. Dr Salk says. It makes possible much wider coverage. The two-shot programme enormously simplifies the administrative problem and the shots provide protection

against tuberculosis, diptheria, tetanus, whooping cough, polio, measles, and yellow fever. Every year, tetanus kills a million children and polio cripples some 400,000 to 500,000.

Experiments employing the new techniques have been quietly going on in Senegal and the Upper Volta in Africa. The Upper Volta scheme is funded by the Dutch Government to eliminate polio there.

In both cases, Dr Salk says, the experiments have proved successful. He agrees with James Grant that a worldwide mass immunisation programme could be launched at once. In other words, a dramatic improvement in the health of the world is now simply a matter of decision. — Copyright. London Observer Service.