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MSD has launched a vaccine — RotaTeq — to prevent rotavirus gastroenteritis, a leading cause of severe diarrhoea in infants and young children. RotaTeq is an oral, three-dose vaccine given to infants between the ages of six to thirty two weeks.
Mr K.G. Ananthakrishnan, Managing Director, MSD in India, said, “India suffers from a high disease burden of rotavirus- associated diarrhoea which also leads to high child mortality in the country.”
Rotavirus is the single most common cause of severe gastroenteritis in children worldwide, infecting virtually every child by five years of age. In India, it is associated with 39.2 per cent of all diarrhoea-related hospital admissions among children aged less than five years resulting in substantial mortality and morbidity for children.
About 2 million outpatient visits in children under the ages of 5 years can be attributed to this highly contagious disease, while nearly, 1 in every 200 children under the age of 5 years dies due to rotavirus diarrhoea in the country.
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