A massive new study led by scientists at the University of Liverpool, UCL, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and partners in Malawi has become the foremost to offer population-level substantiation from a low-income country that rotavirus vaccination decreased diarrhea deaths in infants by 34%.

The paper published in The Lancet Global Health, adds significant influence on the World Health Organisation's proposal for the rotavirus vaccine to be incorporated in all nationalized immunization programmes.

Professor Nigel Cunliffe from the University of Liverpool's Centre for Global Vaccine Research, one of the study heads, said: "Rotavirus remains a leading cause of severe diarrhea and death among infants and young children in many countries in Africa and Asia. Our findings strongly advocate for the incorporation of rotavirus vaccine into the childhood immunization programmes of countries with high rates of diarrhea deaths, and support continued use in such countries where a vaccine has been introduced."

Researchers conducted a huge population-based birth cohort study including 48,672 infants in Malawi, which administered a monovalent rotavirus vaccine in October 2012, to evaluate the efficacy of the vaccine on infant diarrhea deaths.

"This is encouraging because children from the sub-Saharan African region account for more than half of global diarrhoea deaths, and with over 30 African countries thus far introducing rotavirus vaccine, the absolute impact on mortality is likely to be substantial," said one of the report's lead authors Dr Carina King, a senior research associate at UCL's Institute for Global Health.

"Within about a year from vaccine introduction, we were able to reach up to 90% of the population. It is vitally important that rotavirus vaccines reach all children, especially the most vulnerable living in poorer settings where the impact of vaccination is greatest," said one of the authors Dr. Charles Mwansambo, Chief of Health Services for Malawi.