Pneumococcal disease: new challenges and new proposals for Latin America.

Invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD) is the leading cause of vaccine preventable deaths in children < 5 years worldwide and it causes a significant disease burden in Latin America and the Caribbean. In order to combat the increasing incidence of IPD in our region, the vast majority of countries have included pneumococcal vaccines as a preventive strategy. The GREEN group (Grupo Regional de Estudio de la Enfermedad Neumococica) has been created to study pneumococcal disease, unify data from the Latin American countries and learn in detail the epidemiology pre and post-pneumococcal vaccination.