Cape Town - Two newer vaccines which prevent killer diseases in childhood such as pneumonia, meningitis and diarrhoea are starting to pay off, having reduced these illnesses among children by almost three-quarters, Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi has announced.
Addressing MPs during the Health Budget vote in Parliament on Tuesday, Motsoaledi said since the introduction of pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV) and the rotavirus vaccine, pneumococcal diseases in children under the age of five had declined by 70 percent while rotavirus had seen a 66 percent reduction in diarrhoea-related hospitalisation.
Pneumococcal diseases include dangerous health conditions including meningitis and pneumonia – which are regarded as the leading causes of death in children under the age of five.
Introduced in 2009, the two vaccines remain the most expensive with one shot of PCV costing the state R600. South Africa became the first African nation to introduce the PCV.
Presenting his proposed budget of just over R36-billion, Motsoaledi said the introduction of these vaccines was part of his preventative health strategy, which focused on promoting health and preventing rather than curing diseases.
While preventative health care was commonly undermined by the public, including politicians and the media, Motsoaledi vowed not to abandon or weaken it. Instead “it is going to be the foundation of our programme of health system strengthening”.
To avoid reliance on anecdotes and wrong conclusions, at the introduction of the two new vaccines his department had asked the National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) to monitor the impact of the inoculation programme.
“Sadly, in today’s narrative it may count for nothing. What would have counted is if I were to announce that we allowed children to have pneumonia and meningitis and successfully treated them all. This type of announcement would have found resonance with major sections of the media and some politicians,” he said, citing that South Africa had been criticised for not having Ebola cases, depriving the country of a means to test whether the health system could cope.
Motsoaledi argued that treating diseases would have been more expensive than preventing them. While it cost R600 for the PCV shot in 2009, treating a pneumonia case would have cost the state almost R7 000 and treating meningitis would have cost about R18 000.
The state was investing R450 million every year for PCV and R200m for the rotavirus vaccine, while the cost to vaccinate young girls against human papillomavirus cost in the region of R400m a year.
Motsoaledi said the most important gain in these vaccine investments was that “mortality among children under 5 years has gone down with a major contribution by the combination of the antiretroviral programme and these two new vaccines”.
Through the MomConnect Project in Soshanguve last year, almost 400 000 pregnant women were registered and monitored using cellphone technology throughout their pregnancies until giving birth.
Through the programme, Motsoaledi said his department received more than 1 500 compliments and 290 complaints. The complaints were long queues in state facilities and rude and unfriendly staff. Drug shortages were the third biggest complaint.
Cape Argus