Since 2002, China has immunised 11.1 million children in the country's poorest and most remote western and central provinces against hepatitis B, reducing their risk of developing a deadly and common liver cancer, according to an announcement made yesterday by the Chinese government and the GAVI Alliance, formerly called the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization.
Following a ceremony in Beijing, held to commend the Chinese for their dramatic progress, GAVI and Chinese health officials told journalists that the boost in immunisations represents a 60% increase in hepatitis B vaccine doses delivered to children in target provinces. The children reached include newborns, who receive a "birth dose" of vaccine plus two more doses at one and six months of age, as well as previously unvaccinated children under five, who must also receive a full three-dose vaccine series.
"Our goal is to protect all the babies at birth from this virus," said China Minister of Health Gao Qiang. "The China-GAVI Hepatitis B
Immunisation Project has propelled us forward on this path, covering one-third of all children born in China since the project began in 2002."
According to an estimate based on a 1992 national hepatitis epidemiological survey, 120 million people in China are chronically
infected with hepatitis B (HepB). Those infected are at risk of liver cancer or failure, and can spread the disease to others. In the western provinces, the campaign, with technical guidance from the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF, has reached almost 70% of newborns with a birth dose of vaccine in 2005, up from 47% in 2002. Newborns are a key target of the effort, since vaccination within the first 24 hours of life is the only way to protect an infant from transfer of virus from an infected mother.
Since its inception, the campaign has averted over 200,000 future deaths due to the chronic consequences of hepatitis B, mainly from cancer of the liver and cirrhosis. Death typically comes decades after children are exposed to the virus during childbirth or in their first years of life.
The breakthrough is the result of a five-year US$76 million project, co- funded equally by the Government of China and the GAVI Alliance. Known as the China Ministry of Health/GAVI Hepatitis B Vaccination Project, the GAVI-supported campaign has targeted newborns and children under five across an area that encompasses 470 million people, including six million newborns every year. It has reached babies born in hospitals, as well as those born at home in mountain villages or in the tents of nomadic herders on the vast steppes.
