SA vaccine cuts bacteria to size

South Africa has shown the world that a vaccine against the strains of bacteria that can cause deadly meningitis and pneumonia in children works.

A study published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, to coincide with world Pneumonia Day, records the country's success in reducing pneumococcal disease.

Pneumococcal diseases are diseases caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae bacterium. These can include some cases of meningitis, sepsis, pneumonia and, less seriously, middle ear infection.

Pneumococcal disease is one of the leading causes of death in children under age 5. It also affects HIV positive adults.

In 2009, the country introduced a vaccine against pneumococcal disease into the infants vaccination programme, the first country in Africa to do it.

The vaccine has been so successful it has reduced cases of pneumococcal disease in adults who were not immunised, due to the overall reduction of the disease and transmission from children.  

Laboratory scientists who have been measuring Streptococcus pneumoniae bacteria in blood samples from 2005 until to 2012, were able to see a  reduction of cases caused by bacteria targeted by the vaccine, of almost 90%.

Cases of disease detected before the vaccine were almost 700 a year in children under the age of two  and after the vaccine down to less 74 cases in 2012.

Dr Anne Von Gottberg, lead author of the paper and  Head of the Centre for Respiratory Diseases and Meningitis at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, said that even these figures were an underestimate of the size of the problem before the vaccine.  Not every case of the disease is detected by the laboratory.  But the huge reduction in detected cases shows the vaccine is working. 

The vaccine was developed to protect children against diseases caused by strains of bacteria that are resistant to one or more antibiotics.   

So successful was the programme that resistant strains of the disease dropped dramatically. 

“These are very compelling results,” said Dr Seth Berkley, CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, that part-funded the research.

“Not only does it add significant weight to the growing body of evidence that he vaccine  prevents disease, but it suggests that vaccines may have a role to play in the fight against antibiotic resistance.”