The Union Health Ministry increased the use of the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine in the universal vaccination program for the entire country on Friday, to lower infant mortality by 60%. The vaccine was first offered in five states: Bihar, Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh, which collectively account for roughly 70% of India’s pneumonia burden. Pneumonia is a prominent cause of death in children under the age of five in both India and the rest of the world. The Union Health Minister stated when announcing the expansion, “The national implementation of PCV would cut child mortality by nearly 60%.”
As per a UNICEF report cited by the Union Health Ministry in Parliament, India ranks second in the world for the number of children who died from pneumonia in 2018, with approximately 1,27,000 deaths. Surprisingly, the government does not have any current information on the prevalence of pneumonia in India. The ministry of PCV uses numbers from 2010 in a January 2021 report, with authorities acknowledging that the pneumonia data hasn’t been updated since the past decade when 1,05,000 pneumonia fatalities occurred in Indian children under the age of five. In India, 3.6 million cases of severe pneumonia in children under the age of five were reported in 2010.
Severe pneumonia was expected to affect 30.7 out of 1,000 children under the age of five each year, and 87.3 out of 1,000 infants under the age of one. With cooperation from GAVI, the Vaccination Alliance, the three-dose vaccine has been provided to children at 1.5 months, 3.5 months, and 9 months in Himachal Pradesh, Bihar, and Uttar Pradesh since 2017, benefiting more than 20 lakh children. As a result, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh were included in the program.
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