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Top Six Vaccine-Preventable Diseases Still Deadly to Children

Article

How do US figures on child mortality from vaccine preventable diseases compare with global stats? Update here, plus a brief review of vaccine efficacy.

Across the globe, more than 100 million children per year now are immunized against vaccine-preventable diseases. But 6 of these infections still claim hundreds of thousands of lives, most of them children before the age of 5. Deaths from hepatitis B are usually in adults, but most had contracted the infection in early life when infection is much more likely to result in chronic disease. 

Can you rank these 6 still-deadly diseases from highest to lowest in terms of number of deaths?

 ♦ Diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis combined

 ♦ Hepatitis B

 ♦ Influenza

 ♦ Measles

 ♦ Pneumococcus

 ♦ Rotavirus



 

Click on the titles below for the next articles in the Patient Care Pediatric Vaccines Special Report:
Measles: When to say NO to MMR Vaccine
Quadracel Approved: Take the PI Test

 

References:

WHO, UNICEF, World Bank. State of the world’s vaccines and immunization, 3rd ed. Geneva, World Health Organization, 2009. http://www.unicef.org/media/files/SOWVI_full_report_english_LR1.pdf

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