A group of University students and faculty recently received a $14.7 million donation from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support research to improve the effectiveness of polio vaccinations in Bangladesh.
Dr. William Petri, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases and International Health at the Medical School, is a co-leader of the Performance of Rotavirus and Oral polio Vaccines in Developing countries study. The purpose of the study is to discover why the polio vaccines given to children in developing countries are only half as effective as the same ones administered in wealthier nations.
The money will allow the team to travel to Bangladesh in April to study the immune systems of 1,000 children. The donation will help set up clinics providing medical care for the children and be used to hire field assistants who will visit the children twice a week. The donation also will ensure the vaccines are readily available. Because no new or experimental drugs will be used, there will be minimal risk for the children who are studied, Petri said.
"We are trying to understand better why the polio vaccine is not working," he said.
He hypothesized one possible reason for the difference in effectiveness of the vaccines may be that children in poor areas are more susceptible to diarrheal diseases.
"Administering an injection vaccine [after an oral one] may boost response to the oral vaccine," Petri said. When vaccines are given orally, chronic diarrhea infections inhibit the children from responding positively to them, he said. Petri added the problem comes not from lack of adequate vaccination, but from poor response.
"9.5 million children die every year before their fifth birthday," Petri said. "Major causes [of this] are diarrheal diseases and pneumonia ... the number one cause of diarrheal disease is rotavirus." He said the impact of increasing the effectiveness of the vaccine even from 50 to 55 percent could save thousands of children's lives.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has committed $10 billion this decade to vaccine research.
"Vaccines are a miracle - with just a few doses, they can prevent deadly diseases for a lifetime," Melinda Gates said when the couple announced the pledge during a press conference last January. "We've made vaccines our number one priority at the Gates Foundation because we've seen firsthand their incredible impact on children's lives."
The foundation also has supported the University's research in the past, Petri said. Petri and University students went to Bangladesh last year to study malnutrition, which led to the recent donation, he said.
"The Gates Foundation came to us because we were already studying a related issue," Petri said. "We suspected that the problem with malnutrition could be linked to the problems with rotavirus"
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