New children's vaccine initiative launched.

The international community has launched the Children's Vaccine Initiative, which has created the most ambitious grouping of public and private sector interests ever to tackle a global health issue. Developed by WHO, UNICEF, UNDP, the World Bank, and the Rockefeller Foundation, the initiative is the result of decisions taken at the World Summit for Children, held in New York in September 1990. During that meeting, world leaders requested greater resources for the development of new or better vaccines. The Children's Vaccine Initiative, says WHO Director-General Dr. Hiroshi Nakajima, will not only yield specific benefits in improving vaccines, it will also establish a process of collaboration between the public and private sectors, which will have far-reaching benefits in other areas. The new initiative comes on the heels of another international effort, the successful Expanded Program on Immunization, which in 1990 achieved its goal of immunizing 80% of the world's children against 6 major childhood diseases: poliomyelitis, measles, tuberculosis, diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus. The new initiative will strive to develop vaccines against a wider spectrum of viral, bacterial, and parasitic diseases which cause mortality in children. These diseases include rotavirus infection, hepatitis A and E, dengue, Japanese encephalitis, acute respiratory diseases, meningococcal meningitis, diarrheal diseases, pneumococcal pneumonia, and malaria. The new initiative will also seek to improve existing vaccines, making them easier to administer and less painful and costly.