Interactive guide to GAVI's support for the pentavalent vaccine

THE DISEASESTHE VACCINEGAVI's ROLERESULTS

Pentavalent vaccine is administered at Freetown health clinic in Sierra Leone. Copyright: GAVI/09/Olivier Asselin

Although Haemophilus influenza type b (Hib) diseases and Hepatitis B (Hep B) infections are preventable with one combined life-saving vaccine, both continue to pose risks to the world’s most vulnerable populations, leading to life-long disabilities or even death.

The Hib bacterium causes meningitis and pneumonia and is considered the third vaccine-preventable cause of death in children aged under five. It is estimated that there are three million cases of serious Hib infection annually, of which 400,000 result in childhood death. The majority of survivors suffer paralysis, deafness, mental retardation and learning disabilities.

Babies and young children are most at risk from Hep B, a viral disease, which attacks the liver and can cause both acute and chronic disease. This can lead to chronic liver disease and puts victims at high risk of death from cirrhosis of the liver and liver cancer in later life.

More than two billion people are infected by Hep B worldwide of whom 360 million suffer from chronic Hep B infection; the latter is highly prevalent in all countries that GAVI supports.

Children are most vulnerable to infection with 90 percent of infants infected in the first months of their lives developing chronic Hep B infection. Infections in the developing world are mostly from mother to child, or from child to child, mainly through cuts, bites, scrapes and scratches.

Vaccinating against Hib and Hep B represents an essential step towards reaching Millennium Development Goal 4, which is to reduce the under-five mortality rate by two thirds by 2015.