A rotavirus vaccine that can be given days after birth has been developed by Australian and Indonesian researchers.
Rotavirus is the common cause of severe diarrhoea and a killer of approximately 215,000 children under five globally each year.
The oral vaccine, called RV3-BB, was given in three single doses, the first within five days of birth. Until now, the vaccine against rotavirus was available in Australia and only on the private market in Indonesia, and could only be administered from six weeks of age.
After three doses of RV3-BB administered from birth:
- 94 per cent of infants were protected in their first year of life against severe rotavirus gastroenteritis
- 75 per cent of infants were protected to 18 months of age.
The success of the RV3-BB vaccine is the culmination of more than four decades of work, which started with the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute’s Professor Ruth Bishop and the discovery of rotavirus in 1973.
The trial was funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and PT BioFarma.
Read the full media release on the MCRI website.
Read an earlier story on the work in our Stories of Indonesia-Australia Innovation collection from 2016.